Book excerpt: In a field where change and growth is inevitable, new electronic packaging problems continually arise. Smaller, more powerful devices are prone to overheating, causing intermittent system failures, corrupted signals, lower MTBF, and outright system failure. Since convection cooling is the heat transfer path most engineers take to deal with thermal problems, it is appropriate to gain as much understanding about the underlying mechanisms of fluid motion as possible. Thermal Design of Electronic Equipment is the only book that specifically targets the formulas used by electronic packaging and thermal engineers. It presents heat transfer equations dealing with polyalphaolephin (PAO), silicone oils, perfluorocarbons, and silicate ester-based liquids. Instead of relying on theoretical expressions and text explanations, the author presents empirical formulas and practical techniques that allow you to quickly solve nearly any thermal engineering problem in electronic packaging.