Physics
Two flat metal surfaces touch across about one per cent of their area. The rest is air, and that is what cooks your laptop
3 Sept 2026 · 11 min read
A processor does not overheat because copper is a poor conductor. It overheats at the joins — and at the nanoscale, heat behaves in a way that is exactly opposite to the usual assumption that smaller is better. That inversion is a problem for chips and the entire basis of thermoelectrics.
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