Adiabatic studies, glass transition

The experimental glass transition is, therefore, associated with a relaxing property - the enthalpy. The enthalpy/specific heat modes, in principle, couple to all phenomena which occur in the glass transition region. Enthalpy relaxation can be studied by applying a sinusoidal temperature pulse, much like an alternating electric field, which is applied to study dielectric relaxation. The specific heat is therefore treated as a frequency (of thermal field) dependent property. The traditional adiabatic technique cannot be applied because the time required for heat diffusion across the sample has to be short compared to the measurement time and the former is determined by the thermal diffusivity, which is low for most solids and is of the order of 10 cm s. ... 

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