gslack
Senior Member
- Mar 26, 2010
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Ian, the skin is the radiator, the clothing or blanket if it is colder than the skin at the time it is placed in contact with it will indeed make the skin overall cooler for a time. Once the the inside of the blanket reaches equilibrium with the skin its in contact with, then the situation will change of course. But at the point a cooler body (blanket) first makes contact with a warmer body (skin) the skin will get cooler until equilibrium is reached.
I think Wirebender is referring to that, and you are most likely referring to after equilibrium is reached. When broken down fully you will find they are two different situations both mathematically and naturally...
A good example, is a cold pillow.. I like to turn my pillow over at night so I have a cooler side on my face until I fall asleep. I can feel it making my skin cooler at first, then once equilibrium is established, it of course causes my skin to get warmer on the side touching that same pillow. I turn that same pillow over and its cold on that side, and again it cools my skin for a time...
certainly I can agree with that point. but the cool side of the pillow is mostly a combination of conductance and heat sink. I thought we were discussing radiation at equilibrium. you may even be correct at the boundary of skin and clothes because of the better thermal capacity of conduction over radiation. but a clothed body loses less heat than an uncovered one so the body will not need to burn as much food to keep at its desired temperature of 37C internally.
Ian you are trying to nitpick this until you can walk away thinking you are right.. I will not play a semantics tit-for-tat game with you any longer.. The point remains the fact the colder blanket will cool the warmer skin for a time, regardless of the means the end result is the same... Jesus dude what the hell is wrong with you?
I said I believe the two of you were referring to separate points in the blanket/skin heat interaction. He was referring to point of contact which from the wording of your post I can hardly blame him, thats what I took it to imply. And you are referring to equilibrium state..
on a side note... I an I think you are confused regarding equilibrium and what it means in cases like spencers experiment and our discussions of it.. the best definition I have seen is this one : Equilibrium (⇌ is the condition of a system in which competing influences are balanced.
This does not mean both bars will reach the same temperature. What it means is they will be in balance as far as energy in, out, and with limitations inherent with environment, conditions, materials, et al..
Equilibrium in the experiment and our discussion of it have been in reference to the energy not the heat produced from that energy or the temperatures of the bars..
If you read spencers experiment more carefully you will see HE says they reach equilibrium when the first bar is at 150 F and the second bar is at 100 F...
Ian I seriously don't think you want to find truth here, I think you just want to walk away feeling you are right no matter what... Your arguments are all too often misusing terms and conditions, you seem to not have many of the core knowledge any form of physical science study would give you.. You didn't know the two-slit experiment, you didn't know that a photon was EM radiation, and know you show you do not what equilibrium ins systems means...
I am growing tired of this game Ian, I really am..