BEFORE DISPERSION - HEAT ATTRACTS — Thermal Causality Through Simple Experimentation

Abstract

Three simple probe-array experiments examined the spatial and temporal ordering of temperatureduring bottom heating in soybean oil and water. In soybean oil, the bottom probe responded first. During a later 17 s interval of continuous heating,however, the bottom temperature showed no measurable increase at 1 °C resolution while thenear-surface temperature increased by 21 °C. At flame extinction, the surface was 47 °C warmerthan the bottom; 15 s later the difference reached 51 °C. In water, the bottom again responded first, but the surface became warmer 18 s after ignition andlater reached a maximum measured surface-bottom difference of 17 °C. A third experiment combined bottom heating with ice at the surface. The surface became warmerthan the bottom 14 s after ignition. The bottom fell from 26 °C to 25 °C and required 45 s ofcontinuous bottom heating to return to 26 °C; at that time the surface had reached 31 °C while iceremained present. Across the three experiments, the recurring observation was therefore not persistent thermaldominance at the region of energy input, but a rapid transition toward surface-dominanttemperature measurements. The experiments measure temperature, not fluid trajectories or force. The causal interpretationproposed here is that the observed convective sequence may begin with relatively colder matterapproaching the energetically active region, followed by energization and redistribution: approach → energization → redistribution . In this restricted ontological sense, before dispersion, heat attracts. The experiments are deliberately simple and directly reproducible. Their primary purpose is not toestablish a completed thermal theory, but to present an observable sequence, compare it with aprospective expectation, and invite independent reproduction.