How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by StavrosK on Sunday July 17, 2011 @06:24AM (#2773021)

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today.

Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by mechanical_fish on Sunday July 17, 2011 @09:46AM (#2773295)

The point about humidity has already been made. I was astonished at how comfortable 115 degrees was in Phoenix. I went on a hike, no problem... Except that I carried a huge water bottle and the bottle ran out in an hour, so there's that.

In humid places, however, sweating is almost useless and you can suffer in mere 90F heat.

The other important point is that somehow folks in Singapore manage to survive, but in Singapore there's never any winter. I once heard a physiologist remark that humans can adjust to a wide range of temperatures, but it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures. That's why the first few days of cold weather in the fall and winter feel really cold and everyone dons parkas, but when spring rolls around the exact same weather feels really warm and everyone puts on their shorts.

So maybe if I set out to live without A/C I'd get more used to it after a while. But the first few days are a killer, and at some point one just gets sick of being listless and warm and starts subconsciously looking for excuses to visit nice air-conditioned buildings.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by lutorm on Sunday July 17, 2011 @10:13AM (#2773327)

it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures

I noticed this empirically with myself whenever I traveled from California to Sweden in the winter. Coming to Sweden, I'd be cold all the time for the first couple of days, and then back in CA, I'd have hot flashes for a few days there. Nice to know that I wasn't imagining things. :)

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by chopsueyar on Sunday July 17, 2011 @10:59AM (#2773394)

I always assumed the heat-capacity of my bones took much longer to change temperature than the muscles and flesh of my body, but once it does, it lasts longer too.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by wwkeyboard on Sunday July 17, 2011 @12:10PM (#2773533)

The problem for most of us in the US is that we can't control how much they refrigerate moste public places. We keep our home ~80F(it makes going outside in south Texas much more comfortable), but that makes my office very uncomfortable at 74F.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by saurik on Monday July 18, 2011 @03:50PM (#2777906)

You are making an assumption that the Middle East is nothing but a dry desert; the forecast for tomorrow afternoon in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is 101 degrees with a 29% humidity.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by fiblye on Sunday July 17, 2011 @08:24AM (#2773166)

Humidity's usually a bigger problem that the actual temperature. 100 degrees in drier parts of the southern US doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as 85 degrees in rainy towns up north.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by StavrosK on Sunday July 17, 2011 @08:43AM (#2773197)

Ah, yes, that would complicate matters somewhat... High humidity is unbearable in the heat.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by fhars on Sunday July 17, 2011 @08:43AM (#2773196)

It is approximately human body temperature. By design it should be slightly less, Farady intended 100 degrees to be the human body temperature but obviously suffered a light fever the day he took the measurment, so these days the human body has 96 degrees. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is defined to be the coldest it could conceivably ever be on the outside in winter, according to Faradays intuition when he decided that this is the coldest day ever. I don't know if he caught the fever during that measurement.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by gjm11 on Sunday July 17, 2011 @10:47AM (#2773380)

> Faraday

Fahrenheit. (It doesn't seem to be true that he intended 100 degrees to be human body temperature. It's possible that he specifically wanted the difference between body temperature and freezing point to be (a power of 2) degrees.)

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by stan_rogers on Sunday July 17, 2011 @03:59PM (#2774054)

Farenheit's "body temperature" was the axillary (armpit) temperature, and he set it to 96 degrees (on average) when creating his scale. And yes, your supposition about the divisibility of key numbers is right.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by fhars on Sunday July 17, 2011 @10:53AM (#2773389)

D'oh, stupid thinko, sorry for the confusion. (And Faraday and Fahrenheit don't even share the same soundex...).

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by sid0 on Sunday July 17, 2011 @10:44AM (#2773377)

Fahrenheit was invented by a guy named Fahrenheit, not Faraday.

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Re:How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America by scott_s on Sunday July 17, 2011 @04:02PM (#2774066)

The difference that humidity makes cannot be overstated. When it's hot but not humid, sitting in the shade makes a big difference. When it's hot and humid, sitting in the shade just means its not as bright.

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