Warming times
Someone (ok it was Shannon) recently asked me if I was more emotional or more logical. I answered her by telling her that the pork loin she had just taken out of the refrigerator would warm according to Newtons law of cooling. We know the temperature of the refrigerator and we know the temperature of the room so if we can figure out the rate by which the mean warns up, we following newton's law of cooling and can determine exactly how long it will take for the loin to reach room temperature. Anyone who disagrees with Newton's logic is STOOPID! I know, I exaggerated for dramatic effect. She waited about five seconds and told me I was definitely more emotional. LOL.
Technically, I guess you could argue that the formula isn't as precise as it could be since meat has a pretty complicated structure but we're talking about a rough time estimate here. I probably should have been smarter than to have committed to a statement trying to tie something abstract (a formula) to something concrete (a pieced of meat) but it sounds like that alone may have answered her question. I was thinking more along the lines of people who might thing that peanut butter proved the existence of little gremlins that acted to heat the meat while we weren't looking.
Incidentally, it looks like its going to take several hours for that loin to warm up. I've included a graph (created using Google spreadsheets) and values using the formula from wikipedia along with the k value stolen from Dkuropatwa's roast.
A2=(35-70)*exp(-0.4377*A1)+70 Hour Temperature 0 35 1 47 2 55 3 61 4 64 5 66 6 67 7 68 8 69 9 69