On Thursday 15 January 2004 20:35, Chimpsarecute wrote: > Are Wind chill temperatures ever used in metric countries? I thought the > proper way to measure heat loss was to use units of watts per square metre. > > What is the thinking behind this nonsense?
Euric, Which method is nonsense? Calculating heat loss in watts per meter sounds quite useless. What would anyone do with this information? Would this heat loss be reported for bare skin? At what temperature? If not, then what? If it's calculated for bare skin, then how do you use it since most of your surface area on a cold windy day isn't bare skin? Who would know how many watts is too much, anyway? The heat loss per unit area will be quite different through hair versus through skin versus though a jacket versus through pants.... Wind chill, on the other hand, is at least immediately useful and doesn't imply an unwarranted level of precision. "It feels like X degrees." John
