The weather has been up and down where I live lately, we just came off a period of unseasonably warm days into much cooler days. I had yet to flip the AC back over to heat until last night when my house was showing 60 degrees. At that time, my hands, feet, and nose were freezing cold. Yet 60 degrees outside is a relatively nice day and certainly doesn’t leave you feeling freezing. On the flip side, if you’re house gets much higher than 72 you start sweating even though 72 is a pretty nice day outside.
Why does the indoor temperature seem to have such a greater affect on whether you feel hot or cold than the outdoor temp does?
In: Biology
Two big factors impact this: sun and wind. The sun puts out a lot of visible light, but it also puts out a lot of infrared and thermal radiation. This means that even if the air around you is quite cold, if you are standing in direct sunlight it might not feel very cold since the sun is acting like a space heater warming you up. The wind is also a big factor, when you are indoors unless you are right under the A/C or heating vent, there isn’t very strong flow of air, which means that your body can heat the air around you without that air being moved away, which slows heat loss. Outside, if there is even a slight breeze, almost all of the air around you is getting moved around and away, which means that it can feel a lot colder.
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