My earliest memory of truly learning about conduction was when I was an 11-year-old Boy Scout at my first jamboree. We had a fire going at our campsite and my scoutmaster had fashioned a steel pipe between two forked steel uprights pounded into the ground to hold a big pot of pork and beans over the blaze.
“Danny, take the pot off the fire and bring it over here,” my scoutmaster said. And then he added, “Be careful.”