If I’m outside and I start to sweat very much then the sun on my sweat heats it up and I feel hotter than before so I wipe it off and feel cooler for awhile- doesn’t water, or sweat, act sort of like a “magnifying glass” that heats up the surface of the skin in the same way that if you wash your car in direct sunlight then it burns off/evaporates which leaves water marks on the car?
In: Biology
Sweat works because when water evaporates, it needs to absorb energy (latent heat of vaporization)
When sweat is stuck on your skin, it’s not evaporating, so you aren’t cooling as much as you can. When you wipe it off, you increase th e surface area of the sweat that remains on your skin so that sweat can evaporate faster, giving you that cooling feeling.
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