How is our body warm/where does the warmth come from?
In: 0
Basically everything our bodies do involves using chemical energy (stored in sugars and fats). As a simple example, consider muscles. Through a series of chemical processes, which I won’t attempt to get into, sugars are broken down into water and carbon dioxide, and some of the energy released by that is used by special proteins to make the muscle fibers contract, doing something like making our heart beat, moving a limb, whatever. Chemical energy is converted into kinetic energy. But that process isn’t completely efficient. Some of the energy from breaking down sugar will inevitably leak out as thermal energy, or heat. At the same time, friction in our joints and tissues will fight against the movement, turning kinetic energy into more heat. This happens for most processes in our body: chemical energy is inefficiently used to do something, with the lost energy turning into heat, and the energy from that “something” will also often turn into heat too.
This isn’t unique to humans. *no* machine is perfectly efficient. At a really basic level, humans get hot for the same reason computers or fans or car engines do.
Latest Answers