How hot do brakes get?

Almost every automotive enthustiast will eventually come to the question, "How
hot do my brakes get?" Well you can get a fairly accurate answer without ever
stepping into the car.
The answer can be found with some math. When a car is moving it has kinetic
engergy. The laws of physics dictate that energy cannot be destroyed or created
but only converted from one form to another. So we get heating in the brakes
when a car is stopped: the kinetic energy gets converted to heat. Now lets find
out how hot. Or at least a close approximation.
The formula for kinetic engergy of an object is approximately

Eqn 1.
m = mass of the vehicle (in pounds)
v = the velocity (feet per second)
Assume a car moving at 60mph weighing 3000 lbs. After converting 60mph to 88
ft/sec (feet per second) we get a KE value of 361,306.4 ft-lbs.
Ok so that is not heat. But now that we know the energy, we can convert it to
heat. Using the assumptions that 1 ft-lb is about .0013 BTU (British Thermal
Units), Multiply the KE of our car by this value and we get 469.7 BTU.
Well that still doesn't translate well in all but an engineers head. So lets convert
BTU's to farhenheit degrees. Another important factor to consider is the Specific
Heat of the brake rotors. All materials have a specific heat number. Since most all
brake rotors are made of cast iron we will use its value of .130. This is a heat
index relative to that of water which is 1.0. It is the number of BTU's which is
required to raise the temperature of a material by one degree F.
With that information lets determine the amount of temperature increase in the
brake rotors.
The formula we will use is:

Eqn.2
Where:
Hs = specific heat
m = the mass of all the rotors added
Q = number of BTU.
Lets assume that each rotor weighs 10 pounds. This will give us a temperature
change of about 90.3F. So if the rotors started out at say 70F ambient, the new
temperature would be 160F. This, of course, does not account for any cooling
effects experienced by the rotor from air flow while the car is in motion.
To determine the heat generated when the vehicle does not come to a complete
stop, first determine the difference in the velocity before braking and the velociy
after braking. Equation 1 now becomes:

Where vi is the initial speed before braking and vf is the final speed reached.
Bear in mind that this same amount of heat is generated in the rotors everytime
the vehicle is stopped. The heat gets added to any heat that is already in the
rotors. Now you can see why it is important to allow either adequate time
between braking events or supply a proper cooling air flow. If mechanical
conditions allow, larger mass rotors will also help. As seen in Eqn 2, the delta t is
inversely proportional to the mass of the rotors. And from Eqn 1, the less overall
mass of the vehicle will help as well.