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why does metal get hot when you bend it?

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theMan

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i was sitting here bending the handle of a fork back and fourth, and it got so hot after about 3 seconds it burned my finger. what causes this heat? friction inside the metal?
 
Exactly; The atoms scrape against each other as the metal bends out of it's original shape. It's like rubbing your hands together except on a very smaller and more densely populated scale.
 
Input work by bending/stretching and you increase the internal (strain) energy of the fork. Viscous losses in the fork convert the energy to heat, while some of them are stored as elastic strain energy which will recover some of the strain you impart.
 
Conservation of energy.

Energy used to bend the fork gets converted into heat.

Chemical energy from ingested food yields glucose,
which is converted to ATP,
which is converted to ADP and release energy,
which allows release of ionic calcium in the muscle,
which interact with myofibrils to induce contraction and produce kinetic energy,
which gets converted to kinetic energy applied to the metal thereby bending it,
which gets converted to thermal energy in the metal.

Total efficiency to produce heat from chemical energy through this process... less than 5%?!?
 
Your will caused the heat, friction was only a side-effect. If you keep it up you will be kicked out of our restaurant. 🙂
 
upon concentrating on the fork realise that it's not the fork that bends but you and you burned your self with that realization......
 
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