question help: I have a question. - Help.com

I have a question.

It may be simple to answer, but i really have no idea.

When the weather outside is hot, then so is the air.
When two particles collide, there is an exchange of energy, so an air particle colliding with your skin should increase the heat of your skin.
If hot air is colliding with your skin, then this too should feel hot.

So why does a fan blowing air at your skin feel cool?

This open post was written 2 years, 7 months ago | V/U/S: 921, 6, 6 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post


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Since writing this post KevinK may have helped people, but has not within the last 4 days. KevinK is a verified member, has been around for 2 years, 11 months and has 23 posts and 283 replies to their name.

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tekoastro offline Verified User (2 years, 7 months) Long Term User Shouts: 3 #
San Diego, CA, US | 2 years, 7 months ago (4 minutes after post)

Your body temperature is almost always hotter than the air. Fanning the air allows more energy to be transferred from your body into the air, since more air is coming into contact with your skin.

At least, that’s how I see it.

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1speedbike offline Verified User (2 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 1 #
Baltimore, MD, US | 2 years, 7 months ago (2 hours, 22 minutes after post)

Since you’re speaking in chemistry terms, I’ll give a chemical explanation..

Your skin feels cooler because when a fan blows on your skin, sweat evaporates off of it. Even if you can’t feel it being wet, there’s always at least a little bit of wetness there. When the moving air particles collide with your skin they do transfer some of that kinetic energy, but it goes both into your skin and into your sweat. As the kinetic energy of your sweat increases, more and more molecules of it gain enough energy to break free from the liquid form and evaporate.

Normally, when you put kinetic energy into something, it will become hotter. If what you’re heating is water, it’ll start to evaporate faster and faster until you reach the boiling point, at which point everything kind of maxes out and it evaporates at maximum rate while not gaining any temperature. When something changes state (such as sweat from liquid to gas), it needs an extra push beyond the normal kinetic energy. In the case of a state change from liquid to gas, this extra energy push is called the “Enthalpy of Vaporization”.

Other than just kinetic energy, substances have a property of “Enthalpy”. I’m not sure how much chemistry you’ve done, so I’ll skip the mathematical definition of enthalpy, and basically just describe it as heat, which is basically a form of energy. Don’t confuse this with kinetic energy though! Enthalpy is more like the inherent energy something has due to its chemical properties (one of these properties is physical state: solid, liquid, gas). A substance in a gaseous state will always have more energy than it would in its liquid state, and this extra energy comes from the Enthalpy of Vaporization. And where does the actual energy for the Enthalpy of Vaporization come from? Yep, your skin. It steals the energy from the heat of your skin, and therefore cools you down.

Sorry for making this so unnecessarily long, but I hope this helps!

KevinK offline Verified User (2 years, 11 months) Long Term User Shouts: 3 #
Leatherhead, B8, GB | 2 years, 7 months ago (21 hours, 57 minutes after post)

smashing. Thanks for that guys

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jonathangrandoit1 offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 8 months ago (10 months, 2 weeks after post)

The sneaker cost 85 dollars and I get 15% off

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siwani_ offline Unverified User #
An Unknown Location | 7 months, 3 weeks ago (1 year, 11 months after post)

i dont even know how i got this site.exactly i am not thinking about to kill myself but i get the feeling that why can’t i die automatically. why not. i feel that one day i would sleep and couldnt wake up next day that would be the happiest day of my life. dunno how to stop thinking about it. i wanna live my life. but everytime i get depressed and think about it. i know i am still young and i have to graduate and go for masters……….but dunno what happens to me once in a while i think about it. anyways i am thinking about going to psychiastric but i would be happy if u would reply me too

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