Slashdot Mirror
MIT Wristband Is a Personal Climatizer
rcastro0 writes "What looks like a CPU's heat sink worn around the wrist apparently may be able to make you feel cool even while it is hot — or warm while it is cold. As Wired reports, this termoelectric device explores human physiology and how we perceive temperature to fool our body and make us comfortable. The device is called Wristify, and Mashable has a video."
DARPA was working on something similar to this. It was a special glove that actively drew blood to the surface of the skin on your hand and cooled it:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html
Looks like someone managed to commercialize it: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=4495810
Anyway, your hands and toes are already your body's natural radiators, since they have a relatively high surface-area to volume ratio. Your body can already regulate its temperature naturally by pumping more blood into the capillaries near the surface of the skin when it needs to cool off more. As it mentions in the Wired article, simply applying a cold heat sink won't really work, since your body tends to draw blood circulation away from contact with cold surfaces, so you'd also need the pump or something to force the blood circulation back towards the heat sink.
When I do martial arts, I find I get the best cooling by simply swinging my hands back and forth. That gives me forced convection through my fingers, combined with enhanced evaporative cooling of my sweaty palms, while the extra centripetal acceleration draws blood out closer to my fingertips.
There's another similar body hack for those of us with trouble regulating your temperature while sleeping and tend to overheat and start sweating under your blankets: simply sleep with your hands and/or feet sticking out from under the blanket. This will let your body better regulate its core temperature using its natural mechanisms of pumping more blood closer to the skin for more cooling, or drawing blood away from the skin to retain heat and maintain proper core temperature. Hey, it's this "one simple weird trick" for better sleep, on the internet... who would have thunk it?
Correct link
Whatever could go wrong with that?
My point is, it's great that people are working on commercializing this, but it's not automatically a Big Brand New Development just because MIT strapped a 12V square to an old watch band and hooked it up to some temperature sensors.
it's not automatically a Big Brand New Development just because MIT strapped a 12V square to an old watch band and hooked it up to some temperature sensors.
Sometimes it does seem like Slashdot simply publishes the MIT newsfeed, without the slightest skepticism.
electronic crap that only works for one semester
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
No, this one is a termoelectric bracelet. It's different.