Week 7

1. What is the Newton’s Law of Cooling?

It is the difference between the temperature of a body or an object with respect to the environment.

2. What variables in your problem correspond with the variables in the Newton’s Law of Cooling?

There are some variables like the environment’s temperature, the temperature of the corpse, the time of death, etc.

3. According to this Law, at what time approximately the death happened?

We do not have the answer for that yet.

4. How does the room temperature affect the time of death?

The body tends to try to reach equilibrium with the environment’s temperature, so according to this Law, the temperatures should get balanced and in this case, the body after some time turns into the same temperature that the environment has. In general, when the body dies and its molecules stop moving, it tends to cold until reaching the environment’s temperature.

5. How does an illness (e.g. fever) affect the time of death?

This variable affects the original body temperature, so we cannot get an accurate result if we not consider the correct value for y=temperature when t=0.

6. How exact is the approximation of the Newton’s Law of Cooling for predicting the time of death?

It is one of the most exact methods although we have to consider that there are hundreds of external factors, and some of them are not even considered that easily, for example the kinds of food the dead person ate or the possible presence of a warming machine in the room. Those factors must be considered in order to get good results.