Tesla Thermodynamics interview question - snubber.ai #tesla #engineeringstudents #engineering

This is a Tesla interview question. Can you pass it? Let's figure it out together. Two identical cups of coffee are both at 95°. One sits on a shiny metal countertop, the other on a wooden table. After 10 minutes, which coffee is cooler? Okay, both cups are losing heat the same way. Convection off the top, radiation from

the sides. The surface underneath shouldn't matter much. So, after 10 minutes, the two have the same temperature. Scrap it. The base of the cup is in direct contact with the surface. And metal conducts heat over a thousand times faster than wood. The metal countertop acts like a heat sink bolted to the bottom of your cup. It pulls heat

out through the base and conducts it away fast enough to keep accepting more. The wooden table? It's an insulator. The wood can't move heat away from the surface fast enough. So, the region under the cup heats up to nearly the same temperature as the cup itself. Without a large temperature difference, no heat can flow.

After 10 minutes, the coffee on metal is noticeably cooler. Not because it loses more heat from the top, but because the metal is draining heat from below a thousand times faster than wood. If you want more questions like this, Snubber has over 1,700 real interview questions from companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril. And you can practice them with

AI mock voice interviews that simulate the real thing. Check out snubber.ai.