Coldness, Wind Chill, and Survival

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Now, my hands get stiff and painful when sitting too long in areas slightly below room temp. My body shifted itself. It's not like I moved anywhere. Just metabolic changes, while ironically I now exercise and am much more active. But that internal heating only happens during and for an hour or two after exercise.

Wait, how does one find a place that is on average below room temperature? The closest thing I can come up with is a refrigerator sitting in a room. Or an outdoors place during non-Summer months (and perhaps some of those too).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Wait, how does one find a place that is on average below room temperature? The closest thing I can come up with is a refrigerator sitting in a room. Or an outdoors place during non-Summer months (and perhaps some of those too).

Colloquially in English "room temperature" is an arbitrary standard range of comfortable temperature, roughly between 15 °C (59 °F) and 30 °C (86 °F). So one finds a place that is colder than that.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Heat sensitivity is really variable, too, at an individual level. I used to sit in my office in a big corporate building and hear the women on the other side of the partition talk about how cold they were, and needing to put on sweaters, and having trouble typing because their fingers were stiff.

There's a quirk of biology differences between men and women, due to body proportions: women tend to have poorer circulation in the hands and feet than men. Sitting basically still (like at a desk) means that the musculoskeletal pumping that happens when you move your arms and legs around doing things can't help force blood into your hands and feet. That's not good for men or women, but it's aggravated for women.
A sizable minority of women (I've heard up to 40% quoted) have Raynauds Syndrome (aka Raynauds phenomenon, Raynauds disease) which aggravates it, as the central nervous system overreacts to temperature drop by clamping down on circulation to the extremities like you're dying of hypothermia, not getting a slightly annoying breeze at the office.

Add on top of that how the "office wear" of many women tends to be lighter fabric and less coverage than the traditional "office wear" of men (long pants and sleeves, and then a suit jacket on top of THAT), and it's very common to have arguments loosely divided between women in men over the office temperature.

Of course, in our office the programmers were in ratty t-shirts and in a dark room, so we were mostly just cold all the time regardless of gender. I, often the only woman, was usually fine because as previously mentioned, my partner and I are polar bears or something.

Disclaimer: Everyone is a unique and special snowflake. I have Raynauds, but I hate heat. I keep a pair of those cheap fuzzy stretchy gloves at my desk instead.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Colloquially in English "room temperature" is an arbitrary standard range of comfortable temperature, roughly between 15 °C (59 °F) and 30 °C (86 °F). So one finds a place that is colder than that.

Ah. Thanks. I was used to it meaning 'the temperature of the outside environment', which seemed contradictory.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Ah. Thanks. I was used to it meaning 'the temperature of the outside environment', which seemed contradictory.

I've never heard room temperature being anywhere near as cold as 59 F, so apparently we Americans can disagree on what it means as well.
I used to sweat when it got as hot as 68, but now that's when I put on a coat.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Bruno

...
Disclaimer: Everyone is a unique and special snowflake. I have Raynauds, but I hate heat. I keep a pair of those cheap fuzzy stretchy gloves at my desk instead.

That is a major complicating fact with regards to many things. Preference does not always match physical resistance and survivability.
Women generally survive extreme cold better than men, but often dislike it more, and for men same goes with heat. Trolling biology.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I've never heard room temperature being anywhere near as cold as 59 F, so apparently we Americans can disagree on what it means as well.
I used to sweat when it got as hot as 68, but now that's when I put on a coat.

Recently (this Tuesday or Wednesday, I think), a colleague told me about the case some years ago at his university: one of the buildings' heating systems went 100% offline, which put its rooms around 0°C/32°F. Sure, almost immediately the lectures were reshuffled to be given in other buildings, but that's still one way to interpret room temperature.

On a less extreme example, 14°C/57°F sounds about right for the typical low end of a room - either for a cold mid-Autumn (when heating is off or only has just turned on), or pretty much any Winter day after one has opened the room's windows for global ventilation for an hour or so.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I've never heard room temperature being anywhere near as cold as 59 F.

The typical standard for room temperature during waking hours in the US is a target minimum temperature of about 68F/20C(below which the heat comes on); maximum temperature (above which A/C comes on) is not as consistent but 75-85F (24-29C) is a plausible range.

The last programmable thermostat I got had factory presets of 68F in morning and evening, 60F (building assumed empty) during daytime, 64F (people assumed in bed) nighttime.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I've never heard room temperature being anywhere near as cold as 59 F.

I'd agree that's outside the normal meaning of the phrase, which I usually think of as something more like 70 F, plus or minus maybe 5 degrees. In casual use, it just means shirt-sleeve comfort. But, that 59 - 86 F value does exactly match the bounds of the US national standard for drugs (the USP-NF, or "United States Pharmacopeia National Formulary"), which defines the term (for purposes of drug storage and shelf lifetime) as 15 C to 30 C.

Cooks lean a little warmer, even over 80 F, as you want your yeast bread dough to be able to rise at "room temperature", which doesn't happen much at 15 C. The temperature also affects the flavor as well as the length of time you need to let it rise.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I've never heard room temperature being anywhere near as cold as 59 F, so apparently we Americans can disagree on what it means as well.
I used to sweat when it got as hot as 68, but now that's when I put on a coat.

It used to be very common in Australia to not have heating in a house, or only in one room of a house. Particularly in older buildings. This seems logical but it's actually a bit ridiculous: Australia still has a winter, and while the winter sun may still be a UV death cannon, those same older houses are designed to keep sun out to prevent solar heating in the summer, and to passively encourage warm air to leave and to draw in cool air. Hearing that it's "winter" and 40 deg F outside is laughable as a Canadian. When it's 35 deg F in the house, in your bed, and the toilet seat is 35 deg F, it's not funny any more.

It gets better in the house by the afternoon, but then it plunges back to death-cold-frozen-toilet temperatures again at night. I'd be going outside to just sit in the sun in dark clothing and sponge up heat, except for the UV death cannon problem.

For reference, living 24-7 in those kinds of temperatures is totally possible for humans, even skinny Australians with poor cold tolerance. During the day you wear a thick shirt and a sweater, warm pants, warm socks and shoes (even in the house - possibly wooly house shoes instead of outside shoes). At night you wear warm pijamas and use an electric heating pad or blanket, a hot water bottle, or your spouse :)