A face from the North - a photo on Flickriver

            When it comes to wrapping up on a cold winter's day, a cosy hat is obligatory. After all, most of our body heat is lost through our heads – or so we are led to believe.

Closer inspection of heat loss in the hatless, however, reveals the claim to be nonsense, say scientists who have dispelled this; Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll, at the centre for health policy at Indiana University in Indianapolis, rubbish the claim.

They traced the origins of the hat-wearing advice back to a US army survival manual from 1970 which strongly recommended covering the head when it is cold, since "40 to 45 percent of body heat" is lost from the head.

The myth is thought to have arisen through a flawed interpretation of a vaguely scientific experiment by the US military in the 1950s. In those studies, volunteers were dressed in Arctic survival suits and exposed to bitterly cold conditions. Because it was the only part of their bodies left uncovered, most of their heat was lost through their heads.

The face, head and chest are more sensitive to changes in temperature than the rest of the body, making it feel as if covering them up does more to prevent heat loss. In fact, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other. If the experiment had been performed with people wearing only swimming trunks, they would have lost no more than 10% of their body heat through their heads, the scientists add.

Well this was not big a surprise to me.

Being a technical, scientific sort of person I often wondered how you could lose so much heat through such a small part of your body. The biggest surprise is how long it took for someone to actually check.

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Taken in: UK / Scotland / Kearvaig (show map)

Taken on: November 15, 2016

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Neil Moralee

man

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Sets appears in: • Faces • Black & White

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Camera: Nikon D7100, f/6.3, 1/400 sec, 300mm (=450mm), ISO 20000 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D7100
Lens:	18.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-6.3
Aperture:	f/6.3
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/400)
Focal Length:	300mm (35mm equivalent: 450mm)
ISO:	20000
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	High gain up
Contrast:	High
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.6 (Windows)
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