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It's vernacular, at least. People say copper conducts electricity well, so something with low conductivity would conduct poorly


Sure, but in the case of copper you want to conduct electricity, so it makes sense to say that it conducts it "well". In the case where you want to avoid head conduction, like when re-entering the atmosphere, you don't want heat to be conducted, so a "poor" conduction is actually "good". I thought it sounded a bit odd, but since I'm being downvoted I'm assuming not many people agree, I thought I'd just point out that I thought it was interesting and/or caused some dissonance for me at least as a reader.


you might not want copper to conduct electricity if it were conducting electricity to your body.


That's my point. If you're designing a suit that should stop yourself from being electrocuted it sounds weird saying that copper has "excellent" conductivity, it's not really excellent in the context you're talking about.


"Copper has excellent conductivity therefore it wouldn't be a great material to make a suit out of if you want to stop yourself from being electrocuted... You'd want a material that was an excellent insulator!"


As I've said, it sounds weird to me but apparently not to you so let's leave it at that.


Space Shuttle thermal tiles "misconduct" heat well, to put a positive spin on it.


That's a funny term, and that's kind of what I'm talking about, as a reader it causes discord to me when positive adjectives are used to describe something that is unwanted, but "misconducting" heat is an example of exactly what you want to happen in the scenario.




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