[time-nuts] thermal transfer - even a little further OT

[Mark Amos]

Timenuts,

In introductory texts regarding the FFT there is some mention of Fourier's studies having had something to 
do with heat transfer.  Yet most of the FFT work I've been exposed to has to do with decomposing signals 
into component sinusoids, translating between time and frequency domain, etc.

Does anyone have a "layman's" explanation of how this relates to what Fourier was trying to do with heat 
transfer?  

I suspect my problem is mostly one of "student density", but I can't make the connection between heat 
transfer and what I think of when I think of FFT (unless I were to relate it to infrared radiation, which I 
don't suppose Fourier would have been thinking about...)

Thanks, in advance,

Mark
"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because 
nobody sees it." -- Mohandas Gandhi