science bro

Jump to: navigation, search
Ceiling cat.jpg W A R N I N G

You are not logged in. Your IP address will be recorded in this page's edit history, and will be visible to anyone. See our privacy policy for further information. To protect your privacy, please log in or create an account

 

Please note that all contributions to RationalWiki are considered to be released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, or any later version (see RationalWiki:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource.
Do not submit copyrighted work unless you have permission.

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)
Your changes will be visible immediately.

Please note:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_chill

Scarlet A.pngDon't click here16:15, 1 June 2014

Of course there's a Wikipedia article about it... Thanks

"Shut up, Brx."16:19, 1 June 2014

The tl;dr and slightly oversimplified version is that it's basically an illusion based around how your body senses temperature.

Temperature isn't energy, temperature is the manifestation of energy transfer. It's that molecular motion whacking against another object and transferring heat/motion that way. So the rate of transfer, which is affected by heat capacity among other things (stick your hand in 100 degree water vs 100 degree air and see the difference), is what governs temperature and what we feel as hot or cold. If the body absorbs energy, we sense it as "hot". If it loses energy, we sense it as "cold". How we perceive it is based around that, which is also affected by how cold our extremities are. It's perfectly possible for something to feel warm on one part of your body and cold on another.

And there are some cool tricks you can play on your nervous system by putting hot and cold regions very close to each other. Your brain freaks out and thinks its scalding.

Scarlet A.pngDon't click here16:26, 1 June 2014
 

This may also be of interest: https://what-if.xkcd.com/71/

Scarlet A.pngDon't click here16:26, 1 June 2014
 
 
 
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support