The internal temperature is whatever you said. That’s the temperature your guts need to live.
You have a gigantic organ providing insulation between that and the world. It’s called skin. It keeps the heat in and the cold out and can self regulate for the task too. Doesn’t mean your skin won’t be a relatively high temperature but overall, it’s slightly less than your internals. It keeps your internal temperature that way by releasing the same amount of heat that you produce yourself and capture from the outside, and that difference is usually related to how hot or cold is outside. Because see, heat transfers from a hot to a cold object constantly and passively, and the skin has to chase that value according to demand. Your body will release less heat if it’s cold, and way more if it’s hot out (so it feels even hotter than the air).
Funny detail about fans: Fans don’t actually lower temperatures. Moving air, if anything, should increase it. But it works on us and on electronics for the same reason: We are heat emitters. Pushing air away from an electronic device usually means dragging away the hottest air from the hottest object, so it should overall be cooling down. For us, it also has a bit to do with surface humidity, but that’s because of, again, skin.
Another reason a fan works is because it increases evaporation of sweat. Evaporation involves a phase change which requires energy. That energy is extracted from the body surface. Without air flow the envelope of air next to the skin gets saturated meaning it can’t hold any more water vapor, so evaporation stops.
I was in the carribean recently and OMG with that humidity an 85 degree day was the worst heat I can recall. I live somewhere that it reaches 100 in the summers. But it’s dry here. And that makes so much difference.
It really made me wonder about my dog, who cannot sweat. Is he dying on an 85 degree day?
The internal temperature is whatever you said. That’s the temperature your guts need to live.
You have a gigantic organ providing insulation between that and the world. It’s called skin. It keeps the heat in and the cold out and can self regulate for the task too. Doesn’t mean your skin won’t be a relatively high temperature but overall, it’s slightly less than your internals. It keeps your internal temperature that way by releasing the same amount of heat that you produce yourself and capture from the outside, and that difference is usually related to how hot or cold is outside. Because see, heat transfers from a hot to a cold object constantly and passively, and the skin has to chase that value according to demand. Your body will release less heat if it’s cold, and way more if it’s hot out (so it feels even hotter than the air).
Funny detail about fans: Fans don’t actually lower temperatures. Moving air, if anything, should increase it. But it works on us and on electronics for the same reason: We are heat emitters. Pushing air away from an electronic device usually means dragging away the hottest air from the hottest object, so it should overall be cooling down. For us, it also has a bit to do with surface humidity, but that’s because of, again, skin.
Another reason a fan works is because it increases evaporation of sweat. Evaporation involves a phase change which requires energy. That energy is extracted from the body surface. Without air flow the envelope of air next to the skin gets saturated meaning it can’t hold any more water vapor, so evaporation stops.
I was in the carribean recently and OMG with that humidity an 85 degree day was the worst heat I can recall. I live somewhere that it reaches 100 in the summers. But it’s dry here. And that makes so much difference.
It really made me wonder about my dog, who cannot sweat. Is he dying on an 85 degree day?