engineering question #414



William Kirwan, a 25 year old male from Limerick Republic of Ireland asks on November 27, 2001,

Q:

How much heat energy (watts) is released from the human body? Is there a relation to the area of skin exposed, if so can one determine how much energy is released over a certain area of skin? Will this energy increase with exercise/ambient temperature?

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the answer

Barry Shell answered on November 27, 2001, A:

About the same as a 100 Watt light bulb. There is no relation to skin exposed, but there is a relation to total skin area. (Exposure of skin doesn't matter because the heat eventually gets through any clothing.) The energy released can more than triple with exercise. There are standard engineering formulas to calculate all this. To answer this question I went to www.google.com and typed in "engineering table human body heat output". A lot of other keyword choices would have worked. I ended up discovering some ergonomic design course notes at Cornell University that explains quite clearly how you can do the calculations.



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