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Feeling differently with the same temperature

 

Let me tell a story of people feeling differently with the same temperature in different times at the same location, or more precisely, feeling differently with the same temperature with different financial status.

I heard a story long time ago saying that there was a rich guy called Mr. A in a northern continental town who wanted to kill his very poor neighbor (a strong man) legally so that he would not get into any trouble. There was one very strange thing about that town: the air temperature in every Christmas Eve was fixed at -5 degrees of Centigrade. Mr. A knew the fact that people felt differently with the same temperature if they had different financial status. He then designed the following plot to kill that poor man:

Mr. A bet the poor man to stay outside the house for the whole Christmas eve with a single shirt on. If the poor man can survive the cold then he would get Mr. A’s mansion. If the poor man froze to death then Mr. A had no responsibility for his death. Since the poor man had similar experience before of staying outside in a cold night he accepted the bet and won the mansion that used to belong to Mr. A.

Mr. A left the town.

Mr. A returned to the town three years later with a very pretty lady and some beautiful treasures. Mr. A told the man (he became rich after getting the mansion from Mr. A three years ago) that he thought the man cheated in that bet three years ago but he could not prove it. Mr. A liked to have a same kind of new bet if the man agreed to it. This time, if the man could stay outside the house for the whole Christmas eve with a single shirt on and survived, then the man would get the pretty lady as his wife plus all those beautiful treasures. On the other hand, if the man froze to death, then Mr. A would get his mansion back. The man accepted the bet because he knew he did not cheat last time and he strongly believed that he could do it again and do it easily.

The man died of cold in the early morning of the Christmas day and Mr. A got his mansion back.

 

 

++++++++++++++++++

Read the background and further discussions on this writing in the following link:

A question on Christmas Eve[jlo]
  http://bbs.lasg.ac.cn/bbs/thread-35373-1-2.html


posted on 2007-01-01 13:59 coolboy 阅读(2077) 评论(14)  编辑  收藏

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#1楼 [楼主]
2007-01-01 14:01 | coolboy
jlo’s original question was why people feel differently with the same temperature of 17C in different places of Beijing and Xiamen. My scientific explanations are as follows:

Your cold or hot feeling of your body is determined by how efficiently the heat is removed from or inputted into your body. Your body skin has more or less fixed temperature and moisture. Generally speaking, the efficiency of heat exchange between your body skin and the air surrounding you depends on three factors: (1) air temperature, (2) atmospheric wind and (3) air humidity. A bigger difference between your body parameters and air parameters leads to a more efficient heat exchange between your body and the surrounding air, which in turn leads to more sensitivity of your feeling toward the surrounding air. If the air temperature is much lower than your body/skin temperature you feel cold because your body is quickly losing heat to the surrounding air. Due to boundary layer turbulence, a strong wind can accelerate such a heat-losing process that makes you feel even much colder under the same air temperature.

Now, suppose you go to a hospital and a nurse wants to give you a shot. She will first put some alcohol on your skin. You feel cold/cool on that piece of skin though you know that it has nothing to do with either temperature or wind. The alcohol helps to evaporate your skin moisture into the air that carries a lot of LATENT HEAT with it, i.e., your body/skin is losing the heat and you feel cold/cool. I believe the air in Beijing is drier than that in Xiamen. Therefore, it is easier for your body to lose your body moisture and thus the latent heat in Beijing than in Xiamen even under the same temperature and wind conditions.

http://bbs.lasg.ac.cn/bbs/thread-35373-1-2.html
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#2楼 
2007-01-01 14:57 | awgn
thank coolboy for sharing such an interesting story with us... :)

Happy New Year! :)
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#3楼 
2007-01-08 23:28 | soulreceiver
your story is meaningful .thanks for sharing !

suppose you go to a hospital and a nurse wants to give you a shot. She will first put some alcohol on your skin. You feel cold/cool on that piece of skin though you know that it has nothing to do with either temperature or wind.

in my memory ,when the nurse put some alcohol on my skin ,I just can't help trembling .
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#4楼 [楼主]
2007-01-11 11:45 | coolboy
Girls just can't help trembling because the needle is coming and they usually are also afraid of blood.
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#5楼 
2007-01-16 04:49 | Stargazer
Really? That is very interesting!Does financial status affect the body reaction to temperature?
Generally I dislike rainy winter. I remember the winters I spent in Nanjing, it didn't snow much but often rained in November. And the rainy days were freezing! Of course I know the tempereture couldn't be lower than the snowy days, but it was bad enough. I guess the wind was the most important reason. It was very windy. And it took away lots of heat by evaperation.
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#6楼 [楼主]
2007-01-16 14:13 | coolboy

The first part of my writing only told an old story without much scientific reasoning/thinking whereas the second part was more or less scientific explanations to a phenomenon. Now, since you have brought up the issue of a possible scientific explanation on the old story in terms of body reactioin I do know that poor people and rich people usually eat differently. Generally speaking, poor people consider meat and rice to be high quality food whereas rich people consider salad and fruits to be high quality food. I assume the guy would eat high quality food before the betting started on the Christmas eves. Since meat and rice contain more biochemical energy per unit volume than salad and fruits it was possible that the guy received much more biochemical energy that can be used to convert into body heat in the first betting than the second one.

*******************

When a snowflake falls on your body, it only makes a gentle and very tiny touch to your skin. The contact area between the snowflake and your skin is minuscule and thus very little of your body heat will be conducted to or lost to the snowflake. But when a raindrop falls on your body, it makes splashing and intimate contact to your skin because it “can change easily into another form” of shape, as you had already mentioned in my another writing of “water is powerful”.
[ http://blog.hjenglish.com/coolboy/archive/2006/01/30/222443.html ]

Yes, water is powerful. Water is very powerful to take your body heat away!
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#7楼 
2007-01-18 02:51 | Stargazer
Yeah, different people may feel differently about the tempreture. We had a frozen rain at the end of last week. The roads are still icy. The tempreture is below zero. I am in my thick winter clothes but I saw some people in T-shirts.:$
I always consider meat high quality food. It says eating meat can make people feel warmer in winter.Hoho, I'm starving.:p
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#8楼 [楼主]
2007-01-20 08:48 | coolboy

The latest CNN weather news said:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
More winter heads for Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri
POSTED: 4:05 p.m. EST, January 19, 2007

Still recovering from snow and ice storms that downed power lines and trees in a large swath of the country, residents of Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas braced for another round Friday.

Much of Oklahoma and parts of Missouri were forecast to get 6 inches of snow from Friday to Sunday, even as utilities worked to restore electricity to more than 164,000 customers who lost it in the last storm.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Please take a good care of yourself, staying home over the weekend.
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#9楼 
2007-01-23 08:49 | vicky
Your story reminds me an old saying"創業容易守業難". Generally speaking,If a man hit his peak of life, his enthusiasm will decrease year by year.
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#10楼 [楼主]
2007-01-23 09:05 | coolboy

Yes, I totally agree with you, vicky. It is also said that it is easy to get a good boyfriend or a good girlfriend but it is very difficult to get him or her to marry you. :)
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#11楼 
2007-02-08 17:16 | Stargazer
Last night I watched the film “An Inconvenient Truth”. It highlights the global warming due to carbon dioxide emission. The average temperature has increased greatly over the passed years and keeps going up. Perhaps the man will not die if this story would happen again in the future. :$
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#12楼 [楼主]
2007-02-16 13:34 | coolboy
A bigger problem or consequence resulted from the global warming is the increase of variability in climate or the whole ecosystem. For example, a slight increase in surface temperature leads to a big increase in evaporation which may further lead to an even much bigger deforestation so that some forests may be wiped out completely. Another example is the formation of typhoons or hurricanes near the equatorial oceans. It is not a simple situation that a higher sea surface temperature gives more typhoons because of the increased evaporation of water vapor into the atmosphere. It is that you won’t get any typhoon if the sea surface temperature is below a certain critical value. Likewise, you may expect to get many and much stronger typhoons if the sea surface temperature is above certain critical value.

Therefore, if this story would happen again in future all we can say is that the uncertainty and variability of the local weather condition will be significantly increased. In that case, I guess Mr. A may design a different plot if he still wants to kill the poor man.
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#13楼 
2007-02-21 02:46 | Stargazer
I still remember the time when typhoon Bilis broke the Jingguang railway. It trapped me for almost two weeks. And it caused hundreds of deaths. :(

By the way, How was your new year?
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#14楼 [楼主]
2007-02-22 13:18 | coolboy
When talking about typhoon, people usually think its destructive activities that affect our life. However, the overall benefit that typhoon brings to human being is probably much greater than its effect of destruction because typhoon brings lots of needed water to the north of the continent and to the inland. I guess this is similar to the situation that many insects or bugs are beneficial to human being though they often annoy people.

Well, it was not bad for I watched the “show of new year’s eve”.
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