Heat transfer and cooling

All electronics generate heat. No device operates at 100% efficiency. The energy lost within a circuit dissipates as heat. That heat is the difference between the input and output power. The author suggests that the design for cooling is too often delayed in a project until too late. The resulting fixes or solutions are usually far from optimal, and they typically delay completion of the instrument. In this column, he discusses some of the concepts involved in cooling equipment. At the end of the column, he presents several case studies for cooling instruments.