How does sweat cool us down?

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I always assumed the way sweat cooled us was how the water on the outside of our skin cools off and in turn cools the skin down however I don’t get why the air that cools the sweat cant cool our bodies especially if our skin can heat that sweat just as fast or faster than the air can cool it.

In: Biology

16 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The process at work here is called evaporative cooling. The water in sweat evaporates, and evaporating water takes energy, quite a bit of energy it turns out, equivalent to about half that water’s weight in TNT. Heat from the water itself and its surroundings goes into turning liquid water into water vapor. The result is a stronger cooling effect than you can get from a temperature difference alone. You can even cool an object to below ambient temperature in this way.

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