Suppose you have just poured a cup of freshly brewed coffee with temperature 95oC in a room where the temperature is 20oC.
(a) When do you think the coffee cools most quickly? What happens to the rate of cooling as time goes by? Explain.
(b) Newton’s Law of Cooling states that the rate of cooling of an object is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surroundings, provided that this difference is not too large. Write a differential equation that expresses Newton’s Law of Cooling for this particular situation. What is the initial condition? In view of your answer to part (a), do you think this differential equation is an appropriate model for cooling?
(c) Make a rough sketch of the graph of the solution of the initial-value problem in part (b).