Thinking about this while I sit in 20 degrees heat sweating my ass off. Like shouldn’t anything under 37 degrees feel cold to us?
In: 34
Because the human body generate a lot of heat and is in constant need of cooling in order to maintain that ideal temperature of 37,5C. In order to cool off, we need to transfer the heat we generate to something else, like air.
Air at 30C is gonna be less good at cooling us than air at 20C, for example.
Water is better at cooling than air, which is why an air temperature of 20C is comfortable, but feels a bit cold in a swimming pool.
Wind will affect how cool we feel. That is because without wind, the air right around us will absorb our excess heat, get hotter, then stop cooling us. Wind replaces that now hot air with some fresh, cooler air, ready to absorb heat.
Another factor is humidity. While the air around us can absorb some heat, we possess a more effective cooling method: sweat. Water inside our bodies absorb the excess heat we produce, then that water is pushed through our skin to evaporate in the air. Thus the air absorbs both heat from us, and water from us. If the air is humid, it won’t be able to absorb water as well, which causes our sweat to stay on our skin, which is when we get covered in sweat that’s unable to evaporate.
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