this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Sorry, maybe useless is the wrong word here. I meant your body wouldn't heat up enough to trigger sweating. If you're under running water that's more or less covering your entire body and it's all helping you cool down, how are you getting so hot that you sweat?
When the water’s temperature is higher than the temperature of your body, the heat is being transferred into your body.
Heat flows from higher to lower temperature.
Because we are imperfect animals with imperfect survival mechanisms, and sometimes water is actually hot enough to heat your body above what it considers to be its threshold for thermostatic equillibrium.
Problem: Body Temp Too Hot.
Solution: Emit Salt Water Tears from basically all of your skin so that the heat can transfer into Salty Tears and then evaporate. Works very well in low humidity situations.
But also problem: Humidity and temperature in ambient environment is so high that evaporation either does not work at all or is ineffective at dissipating internal body temp to the outside environment.
Same Solution: Keep sweating even though it doesn't work, enjoy heat exhaustion/stroke.
This is the whole problem of a 'wet bulb' temperature causing mass heat exhaustion, stroke or death: If the humidity and temperature are high enough, long enough, its literally impossible for a human body to naturally cool down.
I know about the risks of high humidity. Does the same risk apply when it's running water that's continually changing? How hot does it have to be where you're actually sweating while standing underneath a shower.
Yes, whether or not you are immersed in still, motionless water, being showered by a ... shower, or rainfall, or hose, being swept along by a river or undertow, or covered in snow...
The primary thing that triggers a human response to sweat is just your internal body temperature.
It doesn't matter how or what is transmitting heat to you, so long as your body is generally above a certain temperature threshold, you will sweat. Go below a certain general threshold and you will begin to shiver.
Exactly what those temperature thresholds are vary from person to person, based on your genetics, the climate you are used to living in, what kind of fitness level you have, whether or not you are currently sick and fighting off an infection... etc.
Generally speaking, I am seeing that humans begin to sweat when their immediate surroundings are 32C or about 90F, but again, different kinds of people used to different environments will have somewhat different thresholds.
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/jappl.1966.21.3.967
So, perhaps thats a rough approximation of how hot the water of shower or bathtub would have to be for a roughly average person to begin sweating while bathing.
Hot weather? Hot water?
How hot would the weather be where you end up sweating when you're whole body is covered in water?