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Your Office Thermostat is Set for Men's Comfort. Here's the Scientific Proof.

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:18PM   Printer-friendly

Phoenix666 writes:

Temperatures are set based on formulas that aimed to optimize employees' thermal comfort, a neutral condition of the body when it doesn't have to shiver to produce heat because it's too cold or sweat because it's too hot. It's based on four environmental factors: air temperature, radiant temperature, air velocity and humidity. And two personal factors: clothing and metabolic rate, the amount of energy required by the body to function.

The problem, according to a study in Nature Climate Change on Monday, is that metabolic rates can vary widely across humans based on a number of factors -- size, weight, age, fitness level and the type of work being done -- and today's standards are based on the assumption that every worker is, you guessed it, a man.

Or if you want to be really specific, a 40-year-old, 154-pound man.
...
Kingma and van Marken Lictenbelt's work builds on research out of Japan which found that the neutral temperature for Japanese women was 77.36 degrees (Fahrenheit) while it was 71.78 for European and North American males.

5.58 degrees is a significant difference. Is it better for half the people in the office to be sweaty than half the people in the office to be chilly?

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:39PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:39PM (#218498) Journal

    or, if the units are non-scientific, have them presented in units derived from SI units.

    Let me try:

    Or if you want to be really specific, a 1.26228e9-seconds-old, 4.2066599e28-daltons man.
    ...
    Kingma and van Marken Lictenbelt's work builds on research out of Japan which found that the neutral temperature for Japanese women was 298.35K while it was 295.25K for European and North American males.

    3.1K is a significant difference. Is it better for half the people in the office to be sweaty than half the people in the office to be chilly?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:12PM (#218522)

    What are daltons? Are they derived from SI units?

    Anyway, a 40 year old man is a 1.3e9 seconds old man. Or, if you prefer, a 1.3 gigaseconds old man. Your many significant digits are pure nonsense.

    Well, strictly speaking it would just be a gigasecond old man, but in this case it makes sense to add a second significant digit.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:23PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:23PM (#218530) Journal

      What are daltons? Are they derived from SI units?

      FYI: atomic mass unit [wikipedia.org]:

      The unified atomic mass unit (symbol: u) or dalton (symbol: Da) is the standard unit that is used for indicating mass on an atomic or molecular scale (atomic mass). One unified atomic mass unit is approximately the mass of one nucleon (either a single proton or neutron) and is equivalent to 1 g/mol. It is defined as one twelfth of the mass of an unbound neutral atom of carbon-12 in its nuclear and electronic ground state, and has a value of 1.660538921(73)e−27 kg. The CIPM has categorised it as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI, and whose value in SI units must be obtained experimentally.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:10PM (#218688)

      Be so pedantic as to demand SI units, round them off to less accuracy than Imperial in practice. Then double down and not recognize SI units when given.

      Really man, at least pretend to have integrity and google that shit.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:18PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:18PM (#218723) Journal

        Then double down and not recognize SI units when given.

        From the Wikipedia quote in the sibling post:

        The CIPM has categorised it as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.