Engineers
have created clothing for a warming world – a fabric that allows your body heat
to escape far better than other materials do. It hasn’t been worn or tested by
humans, so outside experts caution this is far from a sure thing, but a team
engineered a fabric using nano technology that not only allows moisture to
leave the body better, but helps infrared radiation escape better. As a result,
the body should feel around 2.7° Celsius cooler than cotton and 2.1° Celsius
chilli
er than commercially available synthetics. This is designed for a warmer
world – not just because climate change is making temperatures hotter, but because
it takes a lot of energy to heat and cool people’s offices and homes.
Existing
fabrics already do a good job of taking moisture away from the body, but the issue
is more. How do you control the infrared radiation coming out of the human body?
Material does a good job of trapping that heat energy to warm you, but letting
it go is another matter. That’s where clear clingy plastic kitchen wrap comes
in. plastic wrap – polyethylene – does a good job of allowing infrared
radiation to escape the body. The trouble is it also allows visible light to
escape. That means, you can see through it, which isn’t exactly what most
people want from clothing.
So the
engineering team worked at changing the pore size of the material and added
other chemicals, allowing the heat and moisture out, but not visible light. And
it is cheaper than cotton. But that material felt too flat, so the next step
was to weave it, to feel like regular fabric. You touch, it feels very soft. They’ve
used devices to mimic human skin and monitor skin temperatures, but strict
scientific testing rules have prevented them from testing clothing on actual
humans. That’s the next step and outside scientists said there are all sort of
potential pitfalls. And after that, another three years would pass before mass
production could proceed so people could buy and wear it.
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