Measurement of the Convective Heat-Transfer Coefficient

We propose an experiment for investigating how objects cool down toward the thermal equilibrium with its surrounding through convection. We describe the time dependence of the temperature difference of the cooling object and the environment with an exponential decay function. By measuring the thermal constant tau, we determine the convective heat-transfer coefficient, which is a characteristic constant of the convection system.
Comment: 8 pages, 2 embedded figures. Accepted for publication in The Physics Teacher