Why do fans work in cooling you off? The air is already the same temperature in the room, so why does it matter if it’s in movement?

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Why do fans work in cooling you off? The air is already the same temperature in the room, so why does it matter if it’s in movement?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

In addition to the fan moving air away from you (the windchill effect, basically), your sweat also helps cool you off.

Substances have something called the latent heat of vaporization, which is a fancy phrase for how much energy you have to take away from a certain amount of substance (like sweat) to turn it into a gas.

In order for the sweat to evaporate, it uses energy from your body. More sweat evaporates when you blow more air at the human, causing more cooling.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your skin is warmer than the air in the room, so heat flows out of your body into the air. This heats the air directly next to you. Fans blow this warm air away and replace it with room-temperature air.