# Newton's law of cooling with multiple containers system of DE's

• March 25th 2012, 01:08 PM
asantas93
Newton's law of cooling with multiple containers system of DE's
I've been trying to figure out how to solve the following problem:

"A metal bar is placed in a container (call it container A) which is inside of a much larger container (call it container B), whose temperature can be assumed to be constant. Find the function for the temperature of the metal bar at time t."

First, I represent the temperature of container A as x(t) and the metal bar as y(t). The constant temperature of container B is TB. I assume that the temperature of the bar is proportional to the temperature of container A but the temperature of container A is proportional to both TB and the temperature of the bar. Then

dx/dt = k1(TB - x) + k2(y - x) and
dy/dt = k3(x - y)

I was told that I need to make a substitution to solve this, but I can't seem to take this DE down to two variables. Any help would be appreciated.
• March 30th 2012, 03:33 PM
Creebe
Re: Newton's law of cooling with multiple containers system of DE's
Try doing
$\frac{\frac{dx}{dt}}{\frac{dy}{dt}}$
So you get:
$\frac{dx}{dy}$