Answer:
The beam initial temperature is 5 °F.
Step-by-step explanation:
If T(t) is the temperature of the beam after t minutes, then we know, by Newton’s Law of Cooling, that
where is the ambient temperature, is the initial temperature, is the time and is a constant yet to be determined.
The goal is to determine the initial temperature of the beam, which is to say
We know that the ambient temperature is , so
We also know that when the temperature is and when the temperature is which gives:
Rearranging,
If we divide these two equations we get
Now, that we know the value of we can use it to find the initial temperature of the beam,
so the beam started out at 5 °F.