Moon's Graden

When I say "dissipate" I mean transfer heat from material A to
material B (e.g. a radiator, heatsink, or pot to the surrounding
air).  When I say "conduct" I mean a material allowing heat,
electricity, or what have you to flow through it.

When you say "conduct" you mean the same thing I say when I say
"conduct."  However, when an object transfers heat to another object
in contact with it, the heat is "conducted" to the second object
(conduction rather than convection), which is NOT the same as whether
either object is considered a good conductor.  (I must be missing
something here, I believe heat can also be radiated, but it's late and
I have a young starling to feed.)  Conduction of heat from one object
to another is a function of surface area in contact.

To give our brains something else to chew on, consider this:
Materials also have a specific heat capacity -- they can store heat
energy.  Sometimes you can use this property, and "dump" energy at a
higher rate than you can provide it (almost like charging a capacitor
(e.g. camera flash) and then discharging it quickly).  Think of your
soldering iron.  When you put a small tip on it, you can solder only
small joints.  Yet when you put a big honkin' tip on it, you can do
larger joints.  Yet the soldering iron, the heating element, is the
same.  The heating element has the same energy output with either
tip.  What's going on?  Well, the element heats up the big tip, and
when you apply the tip to the joint, the thermal energy is discharged
into the joint at a quicker rate (allowing you to heat a bigger joint)
than the heating element is able to heat the tip.  The temperature of
the tip decreases, and it takes a while for the heating element to
heat the tip to working temperature again.

And all of this is straying from our topic of "how long does it take
to heat a piece of PTFE-coated cookware to outgassing temperature."
:)

Kevin

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http://members.tripod.com/~super_kevin/