system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does heat transfer between a solid to a liquid?

So, I understand the process is called convection (right?), and I understand how convection works, but I'm curious about what is happening on the molecular level.  If I understand it correctly, the molecules of a substance move (or vibrate or something like that) at different speeds depending on their relative heat.  Hotter things move/vibrate faster, cooler things move/vibrate slower, and solids are so cold that their molecules are hardly moving at all, so the entire substance is locked up in the form of a solid.  I know this is super simplified and probably full of over generalizations, but I just want to lay down the concept first.

Now we come to the root of my question:  Lets imagine a glass of cold water, sitting on the table.  For the sake of my poor analogy, lets forget about the part where the air touches the water (say the glass has a lid on or something).  Now, the water will gradually increase to room temperature through convection.  Here's the bit I don't understand.  On the molecular level, the glass will have to heat up first.  The heat in the air will warm the glass, which will warm the water in the glass.  But the glass is a solid, and will remain so at very high temperatures.  So its molecules would be moving very slowly, right?  Slower than the molecules of the *liquid* water, *right?*   But the glass is warmer than the water, because it has a higher melting point, and therefor transfers heat to the water.  **So how do slower moving/vibrating molecules transfer their greater heat/energy to faster moving/vibrating molecules?**

If this belongs on a different subreddit, please let me know.
gpt
Your picture of solids is wrong. Imagine a solid as a 3D array of balls each one joined to It's neighbours by a network of springs. The balls can't change places but they can move backwards and forwards relative to each other. The motion of one ball gets passed on to the next through the springs and so on across the whole solid. As the temperature increases, so does the vibrations of the balls in their network.  The hot liquid molecules colliding with the cold glass transfer some of their momentum into vibrations that slowly get transferred through the glass. Eventually they reach the outside of the glass where the vibrations can collide with air molecules and transfer their momentum away into the atmosphere.