“Why do dogs have cold noses?” wonder many humans who, most of them, have warmer noses than dogs have. Here are two research studies by Ronald H.H. Kroger and colleagues, that sniffed into the question and may have found some answers. Dog Nose-Tip Distant-Heat Sensing Ability? “Dogs Can Sense Weak Thermal Radiation,” Anna Bálint, Attila […]
Tag: heat
Modelling heat loss from a semi-spherical cow udder
Theoretical physicists are sometimes accused of making over-simplifications for mathematical models. This has lead to many variations on the spherical cow story, where a physicist claims to be able to cure a sick cow, but only if it is a spherical cow in a vacuum. Oddly, most iterations of this tale ignore heat radiated from […]
How now, warm cow [Podcast 50]
Heat loss from a cow — that’s the deal in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams —with dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg — tells about: Heat loss from a cow — Khan, Zahid A., Irfan Anjum Badruddin, G. A. Quadir, and K. N. Seetharamu (2006). ‘A Quick and Accurate […]
Hummingbirds get hot too
No machine can be 100% efficient – and Hummingbirds (Selasphorus calliope) are no exception. As a result, when they flap their wings (typically at around 50Hz) they generate considerable quantities of heat. To find out how much, investigators at the Department of Biology, George Fox University, OR, and the Division of Biological Sciences, University of […]
Phoenix: Cooling down the buildings, but maybe not the city
People use air conditioning to, on a small scale, cool off . This report measures the degree and degrees to which it can, on a larger scale, do the opposite: “Anthropogenic Heating of the Urban Environment due to Air Conditioning,” Francisco Salamanca [pictured here], M. Georgescu, A. Mahalov, M. Moustaoui, and M. Wang, Journal of […]
Local warming explained
Yossi Vardi, co-author of the study “Sluggish Data Transport is Faster Than ADSL“, which graced the cover and part of the insides of volume 11, number 4 (the special snails & cookies issue) of the Annals of Improbable Research, gave a talk several years later about the dangers of local warming:
Another Possible Use, to the Elephant, of Elephant Hair
Elephant hair — the hair found on elephants — poses intricate puzzles for those who are inclined to look closely. This study works at solving one set of those puzzles: “What Is the Use of Elephant Hair?” Conor L. Myhrvold, Howard A. Stone, Elie Bou-Zeid [pictured here], PLoS ONE, 7(10), 2012, e47018. The authors, at […]
Experiments with inflatable & other life-size dolls
A generic life-size doll, with no modifications, was the key element in at least one unplanned experiment — the experiment documented in a 1993 monograph called Transmission of Gonorrhoea Through an Inflatable Doll, published in the journal Genitourinary Medicine. But generally, scientists who conduct planned experiments that rely on life-size dolls prefer to carefully optimise, or […]
Flanders, Swann, and Thermodynamics
Behold the story of thermodynamics, as sung by Flanders and Swann (and later illustrated by others): (Thanks to investigator David Koopman for bringing this to our attention.)