Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#51

Post by TeaBrain »

midasz wrote: post #22
deaddodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was written for an American audience. I feel like if you went to a French article and it said "12 degrees" you would know to convert that to Fahrenheit, if you needed. And that's an even less common situation than second-language English speakers ending up on American articles.

How come specifically American, and how'd you reach that conclusion from glancing at the site? A huge number of people speak English as a second language. Usually the notation follows the number, so it's kind of lazy to just say it's written for americans specifically - moreso as a counter to someone saying it's Farenheit instead of Celcius since I also clicked immediately thinking how is that possible.

Fast Company is an American magazine. American business magazines, like Fortune, Forbes and Fast Company, write for a primarily American audience.

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#54

Post by cubefox »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #32
__alexs wrote: post #24

If the difference between two numbers in Celsius is Kelvin, what unit is the difference between two numbers in Fahrenheit?

Fahrenheit. When subtracting two quantities the result has the same unit, we just use Kelvin because it's the appropriate SI unit.

We can't use Kelvin for Fahrenheit differences though. That only works for Celsius. Kelvin is Celsius with absolute zero. Fahrenheit with absolute zero is Rankine.

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#55

Post by TeaBrain »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #32
__alexs wrote: post #24

If the difference between two numbers in Celsius is Kelvin, what unit is the difference between two numbers in Fahrenheit?

Fahrenheit. When subtracting two quantities the result has the same unit, we just use Kelvin because it's the appropriate SI unit.

The other guy who responded to the parent is right. The absolute scale for measuring the difference between two Fahrenheit degrees is Rankine.

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#56

Post by SkyPuncher »

btilly wrote: post #41
denton-scratch wrote: post #18

I'm suspicious that perhaps silver nanowires might be a health risk? I believe finely-divided silver can be toxic, at least in some circumstances. Also, it's a composite with a plastic material, and would probably resist all attempts to recycle it, resulting eventually in microplastics (contaminated with metallic silver).

I am concerned about all kinds of nanowires. If they are sufficiently strong, they should be able to damage your lungs in the exact same way that asbestos does. Not through a chemical reaction, but a mechanical process that damages cells. The damage makes it easier to mutate. Which creates a long-term potential for cancer. Silver nanowires should not be as strong as carbon nanotubes. But are they stronger than cell w…

Asbestos is dangerous because it will not decompose in your body.

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#58

Post by akira2501 »

cyberax wrote: post #33
denton-scratch wrote: post #18

I'm suspicious that perhaps silver nanowires might be a health risk? I believe finely-divided silver can be toxic, at least in some circumstances. Also, it's a composite with a plastic material, and would probably resist all attempts to recycle it, resulting eventually in microplastics (contaminated with metallic silver).

Silver is uniquely non-toxic among heavy metals. You can consume a lot of it without consequences. Some people do, look up "colloidal silver". However, it also has a long elimination half-life, and it can stain the skin.

> without consequences.

Also look up "blue skin colloidal silver."

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#59

Post by akira2501 »

jajko wrote: post #34
deaddodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was written for an American audience. I feel like if you went to a French article and it said "12 degrees" you would know to convert that to Fahrenheit, if you needed. And that's an even less common situation than second-language English speakers ending up on American articles.

That's a weak defense when its obviously beneficial for marketing to claim 16 of X, instead of 8 improvement. Which at the end isn't even that if I understood the claims correctly. 95% of the world population uses Celsius scale, all scientists and military use it too, and ignoring units when having bombastic claims is either negligence or more probably on purpose. I am pretty sure the team (and subsequently company/c…

> all scientists and military use it too,

That's hardly true. Even if it was it's not a justification for forcing people to change their common parlance.

Also, if you really want a temperature scale, you'd have it referenced to absolute zero so it's an actual ratio quantity. So, a lot of "scientists" use Kelvin or in some cases Rankine.

> ignoring rest of the world

There's a conversion factor. We don't keep it secret. We're not "ignoring" the rest of the world, we're just operating in a mode that most convenient for us.

Re: Impossibly thin fabric could cool you down by 16-plus degrees

#60

Post by akira2501 »

TeaBrain wrote: post #55
KeplerBoy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fahrenheit. When subtracting two quantities the result has the same unit, we just use Kelvin because it's the appropriate SI unit.

The other guy who responded to the parent is right. The absolute scale for measuring the difference between two Fahrenheit degrees is Rankine.

Just for the sake of sheer pedantry. The scale for measuring the _ratio_ is Rankine. You can measure differences with an _ordinal_ scale, which is what Celsius and Fahrenheit are.
Post reply on HN