A dimensionless number, Bi, used in non-steady-state heat transfer or mass transfer that relates the internal resistance to the flow of heat or mass transfer to the resistance of that flow at the surface of a solid body:
where h is the film coefficient, l is the characteristic dimension as the half thickness of a slab or radius of a sphere or cylinder, and k is the thermal conductivity of the solid. It is named after the French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862).