Monday, July 11, 2011
What keeps the human body cool in hot weather?
Since water has a higher specific heat (capacity to store heat per mass), when you drink it, it is able to take heat away from your body. This is because it is harder to heat water to a certain temperature than it is to heat up your skin/tissue to the same temperature. Since water is cooler than your tissue because it is harder to heat up, and because heat moves from higher to lower "concentration", heat moves out of your tissue and into the water. When the water moves out of your body, then the heat it has absorbed also moves out of your body. That is why you lose heat when you sweat, because the water essentially absorbs and takes away the heat in your body.
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