Basically title, you always hear “windchill only affects humans” but we use fans to cool things all the time?
In: Physics
Big thing about the windchill is evaporation.
Your skin is always wet (even if you are not sweating profusely) and evaporation cools you down. In fact, it is the main contribution to cooling of living things.
When there is a wind it blows away wet air that was next to your skin and increases evaporation and, therefore, cooling.
For inanimate objects which are usually dry it does not work. Wind will cool them only if they are hotter then the air and only down to the air temperature.
However, if you get a wet towel on something, you’d get a wind chill all right and may get significantly below the ambient temperature.
It is a great way to cool drinks on a beach – take a towel, soak it and wrap around the bottle; put it where there is a wind (but in shadow). Usually it works better then putting them in the water (depending on water temperature and wind strength of course).
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