Last week we went back over some of the basics of heat transfer, specifically, the way heat moves through a solid material, such as metal or glass. Interesting and superfluous side note: glass is actually a liquid… but that won’t affect our use of the term conduction in dealing with vinyl windows and aluminum windows. Moving forward in the name of progress, convection is our next item on our list of window manufacturing industry terms. This is pretty relevant in our discussion of heat transfer, especially considering that convection is a form of heat transfer. Handy, huh? Convection is a process of heat transfer that takes place in a fluid (like air). Now hold on, I know what you’re thinking, that we’re severely confused in our understanding of gas, solid, and fluid. In reality however, it seems to be physics that has is confused. In physics, air is considered a fluid because it flows in a fluid manner. Now, we aren’t claiming that air is a liquid; only that it is a fluid… two very different things according to physics. Anyhow, back to our discussion about heat convection and replacement windows, this measure is especially relevant to the window manufacturing and replacement window industry because it describes the heat transfer that takes place between the surface of glass and the air within a room, or between two panes of glass. Convection is influenced largely by the density of the fluid through which the heat energy is flowing. Gravity also plays a crucial role in this kind of heat transfer. As we’ve explored previously, this type of heat transfer can be severely altered depending on the material filling the space between panes of a multi-paned window. That is probably enough for today, we’ve thrown around some pretty lofty ideas here today, and we’d hate to overdo it.