How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#21

Post by fiblye » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 12:24 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #20

qq66 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

97 is not that hot. I've spent months in those temperatures without AC just drinking water. Almost everywhere, AC is truly a luxury.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

Humidity's usually a bigger problem that the actual temperature. 100 degrees in drier parts of the southern US doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as 85 degrees in rainy towns up north.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#22

Post by fhars » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 12:43 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #20

qq66 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

97 is not that hot. I've spent months in those temperatures without AC just drinking water. Almost everywhere, AC is truly a luxury.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

It is approximately human body temperature. By design it should be slightly less, Farady intended 100 degrees to be the human body temperature but obviously suffered a light fever the day he took the measurment, so these days the human body has 96 degrees. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is defined to be the coldest it could conceivably ever be on the outside in winter, according to Faradays intuition when he decided that this is the coldest day ever. I don't know if he caught the fever during that measurement.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#23

Post by StavrosK » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 12:43 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #21

StavrosK wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

Humidity's usually a bigger problem that the actual temperature. 100 degrees in drier parts of the southern US doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as 85 degrees in rainy towns up north.

Ah, yes, that would complicate matters somewhat... High humidity is unbearable in the heat.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#24

Post by dctoedt » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 1:10 PM UTC

techiferous wrote: post #5

I've heard that air conditioning had an effect on culture, too. Before A/C, you'd sit out on your porch to cool off and as a consequence get to know your neighbors. After A/C, you'd retreat indoors and live a socially isolated life.

Most of Houston was without electrical power during the week following Hurricane Ike (and for many Houstonians it was even longer). Our house has a backyard gas grill that's hooked into the natural gas line, and we never lost gas. Pretty much every evening during that week, the neighbors gathered to grill stuff, with everyone sharing. Then we sat around on the patio and 'visited' until bedtime, lighting candles when it got dark. We have fond memories of those times.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#25

Post by mechanical_fish » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #20

qq66 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

97 is not that hot. I've spent months in those temperatures without AC just drinking water. Almost everywhere, AC is truly a luxury.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

The point about humidity has already been made. I was astonished at how comfortable 115 degrees was in Phoenix. I went on a hike, no problem... Except that I carried a huge water bottle and the bottle ran out in an hour, so there's that.

In humid places, however, sweating is almost useless and you can suffer in mere 90F heat.

The other important point is that somehow folks in Singapore manage to survive, but in Singapore there's never any winter. I once heard a physiologist remark that humans can adjust to a wide range of temperatures, but it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures. That's why the first few days of cold weather in the fall and winter feel really cold and everyone dons parkas, but when spring rolls around the exact same weather feels really warm and everyone puts on their shorts.

So maybe if I set out to live without A/C I'd get more used to it after a while. But the first few days are a killer, and at some point one just gets sick of being listless and warm and starts subconsciously looking for excuses to visit nice air-conditioned buildings.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#26

Post by lutorm » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:13 PM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #25

StavrosK wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

The point about humidity has already been made. I was astonished at how comfortable 115 degrees was in Phoenix. I went on a hike, no problem... Except that I carried a huge water bottle and the bottle ran out in an hour, so there's that. In humid places, however, sweating is almost useless and you can suffer in mere 90F heat. The other important point is that somehow folks in Singapore manage to survive, but in Singa…

it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures

I noticed this empirically with myself whenever I traveled from California to Sweden in the winter. Coming to Sweden, I'd be cold all the time for the first couple of days, and then back in CA, I'd have hot flashes for a few days there. Nice to know that I wasn't imagining things. :)

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#27

Post by lutorm » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:20 PM UTC

jamesbkel wrote: post #16

I definitely agree with author's point about how A/C has shaped American life - not necessarily for the better and perhaps with significant downsides, most notably at a social level. However, I feel like this section (which I consider beneficial without question) was glossed over. And hubs of business and technology in hot regions of the globe, such as Dubai, may never have taken off... Computers throw off a lot of h…

We're using the window procedure to keep our house near Boston cool, and it definitely works. Most of the time it's sufficient (except when I turn on the 3x24" monitors...), but when there's a heat spell and nighttime temps don't drop below 22C or so, it heats up to a very uncomfortable level over a few days and we have to use the AC at least to keep the bedroom at a reasonable temperature.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#28

Post by maw » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:41 PM UTC

techiferous wrote: post #5

I've heard that air conditioning had an effect on culture, too. Before A/C, you'd sit out on your porch to cool off and as a consequence get to know your neighbors. After A/C, you'd retreat indoors and live a socially isolated life.

I live in a relatively wealthy part of Mexico City. I don't know my neighbors, and, for the most part, I don't think that they know each other either.

Nobody here has air conditioning or proper heating. The climate is very benign, rarely getting hot or cold. There's little need for interior climate control, and even less insulation: windows are paper thin and don't shut very tight, among other things. (However, a lot of people do have small portable electric heaters, which are very inefficient to begin with and made more so by the lack of insulation.)

Maybe having or not having AC plays a role as to whether you get to know your neighbors, but it's not the only and certainly not the defining one. Television and not working where you live are, I suspect, far more important.

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#29

Post by yaks_hairbrush » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

genieyclo wrote: post #15

Wilduck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction. Minnesota gets temperatures from -20 to 100. Tomorrow has a high of 97. Definitely not an odd place for AC.

0 deg F is a t-shirt jog here in Minnesota during the winter. Cold is -20 to -40 range. And within the last few weeks, we've had several days 90+ and 100+ deg F. There's a reason lots of the old people migrate with the ducks down south for winter.

Pretty much... I like to tell people that it's not really cold here until your snot starts freezing the instant you go outside. That tends to happen at 10-15 below zero (Fahrenheit).

Re: How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

#30

Post by sid0 » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

fhars wrote: post #22

StavrosK wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today. Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

It is approximately human body temperature. By design it should be slightly less, Farady intended 100 degrees to be the human body temperature but obviously suffered a light fever the day he took the measurment, so these days the human body has 96 degrees. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is defined to be the coldest it could conceivably ever be on the outside in winter, according to Faradays intuition when he decided that this…

Fahrenheit was invented by a guy named Fahrenheit, not Faraday.