Heat Conduction Simulator

The math behind it

Heat moves through a material at a rate that depends on three things: how well the material itself conducts heat, how big a temperature difference it's bridging, and how thick it is. For steady heat flow through a flat slab, that relationship is:

heat flux = (conductivity × temperature difference) ÷ thickness

"Conductivity" here is a real, measured property of the material — copper conducts heat roughly 2,500 times better than wood does, which is why a metal spoon left in hot soup gets uncomfortably warm to hold within seconds, while a wooden one barely warms up at all. Thickness works the other way: doubling how thick a material is cuts the heat flow rate in half, which is exactly why insulation gets installed in thick layers, not thin ones.

This simulator uses typical published conductivity values for each material and assumes steady flow straight through — it doesn't model the material heating up over time, air gaps, or the more complex layering real insulation is engineered around. But the core relationship it shows is exact: more conductive, thinner, or a bigger temperature gap always means more heat gets through.