Thanks
Convention would be my guess. Technically, both are accurate.
It convects, as well as radiates.
Your engine isn't really cooled by convection alone. As a mental experiment, imagine you take out your water pump, close the cooling system and run the engine. It'll overheat really fast, because heat doesn't actively drive the coolant through the system to the cool spot and then cycle it back again. Early versions of the Model T had convective cooling with no water pump, but it's not an efficient method of cooling a larger engine. In practically every modern car, cooling is dependent on mechanical motion of the coolant through the radiator.
The radiator itself cools via radiation, and convection. If your fan breaks, the engine won't overheat right away, because the hundreds of little fins on the radiator are still spreading the heat out to the air. It's not very effective, because it wasn't built to operate that way but it's there, and it will overheat without airflow. If it's warm outside, it will overheat quickly, because it's not designed to cool with stagnant, warm air. If it's extremely cold outside, like -20 or so, you might be able to keep it running a little longer, because the really cold air can suck the heat out of the radiator fins faster, without mechanically forcing air past the fins. Think of a radiator in an old, steam heated house. That is a similar concept to the radiator in your car, only the small amount of space in your car and the large amount of heat it needs to dissipate forces it to use convection and radiation.
The Chevrolet Corvair, an original VW Beetle and your typical lawn mower have purely convection cooling systems. Hot metal on the engine passively cools by dissipating heat to the outside world through metal fins, without mechanically moving a fluid, etc. You can run a lawn mower in place for an hour or more and it won't overheat. It's like a heating element in a convection oven. It's heating air, which rises, bringing cool air in behind it.
convection ovens have fans.
Conventional ovens (also known as radiant) do not.
Good point. I was thinking of "convection" literally as heated air rising and falling, vs a microwave oven, which is totally different. The process is still pretty much the same, I believe. Hot air moves from hot burner to cold region, and fans control how hot or cold it is, and where it is. A typical oven just heats and the air moves at its own leasure.
yeah it's just semantics. Natural convection versus forced convection.
With a convection system you'd be using the radiated heat to cook something.
I've always wondered why a wheel isn't called a rollerator.
Why do we park on the driveway, but drive on a parkway?
Why do we put cargo on a ship, but ship things by truck?