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The water is only cooler because it's evaporating, meaning the wet-bulb temperature also describes the water's own limit. 35°C is slightly cooler than body tem
by myself248 7y ago
The water is only cooler because it's evaporating, meaning the wet-bulb temperature also describes the water's own limit.
35°C is slightly cooler than body temperature, so it would work just a little bit as a heatsink, but another degree or two and even that becomes ineffective.
- leereeves 7y agoThe water is cooler because the specific heat of water is very high, meaning it takes more heat energy to increase the temperature of water. So a large body of water stays cool for a long time, and then stabilizes around the daily average temperature, not the high.
- wongarsu 7y ago> and then stabilizes around the daily average temperature, not the high. However the acceptable temperature range in water is also much smaller because under water we exchange heat quickly and don't have a way to cool below the temperature of the water. Water above ~38°C would be dangerous to stay submersed in. Not a problem for huge bodies of water, but important to keep in mind on the small scale.
- jniedrauer 7y agoThe phase change of water from liquid to gas is an endothermic reaction. In an emergency, if you had water and a fan, you could continually soak yourself and then accelerate water evaporation using the fan. This would keep you significantly cooler than the water temperature itself.