Which of the following has the least thermal conductivity?

Answer Details

Thermal conductivity measures how readily a material passes heat on by conduction, that is by the transfer of energy from particle to particle without bulk movement of the material. Conduction depends on how closely and how strongly the particles are coupled, so it is best in solids (and outstanding in metals, where free electrons also carry energy), poorer in liquids, and worst in gases, whose molecules are far apart and rarely interact.

Air has by far the smallest value, so air is the poorest conductor of the four. This is exactly why insulating materials are designed to trap air rather than to be dense: cotton wool, fur, feathers, cavity walls and vacuum-flask jackets all work by holding air still. Ash insulates well for the same reason, but its own solid particles still conduct, so it cannot be a better insulator than the air within it.

A caution worth remembering: still air is a superb insulator, yet moving air carries heat away rapidly by convection. Conduction and convection are separate mechanisms, and a question about conductivity is asking only about the first. When the choices span different states of matter, rank them gas, liquid, non-metallic solid, metal in increasing order of conductivity and the answer usually follows at once.