Question: What do you think the best thermal inculater is?

Ollie Thomas answered on 9 Feb 2023:

Weirdly, the thing that is best at keeping heat in is….. nothing. Heat gets passed along by the tiny little bits which make up materials (molecules) bumping into each other and passing along the heat (a bit like a Mexican wave). If the molecules can’t bump into each other, they can’t pass on the heat. This is why good insulators like polystyrene or wholly coats have lots of air in them, as the air means the molecules are far apart, so they have trouble bumping into each other. The best insulator would be a vacuum (like in the flasks people use for keeping drinks warm) as there are no molecules in a vacuum, so the heat cant pass along.