穿浅色衣服真的会更凉快吗?
Question: What do astronauts, brides and Tom Wolfe have in common? They all wear white to keep the heat at bay. Anyway, the sartorial thinking is this: floaty, breezy, delicate fabrics of the lightest colors allow all that solar heat fighting its way to our skin to just reflect away instead. Wear dark fabrics, the idea goes, and you're stuck with that heat as it greedily absorbs into the fabric and causes you to swelter in your own clothes. But white clothing will cheerfully bounce that solar heat right off, and you'll be (more) comfortable on a hot day. While all that certainly sounds great in theory, there are a few other factors at play that might be working against the light clothing adage. At the very least, there's some compelling evidence that says it doesn't matter. Let's start with some 1980 academic research from the journal "Nature," titled "Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts?"
They found that the black clothing did absorb more heat, but that's where it stayed: In other words, the black soaks up additional heat, but that extra is lost by the time it actually gets to your skin. Way more useful for keeping cool, however? The fact that the robes are loose and billowing, to allow airflow. There's also an argument that the whole "light clothing" argument is missing a key element: the person who's wearing the clothes. This means that the heat your body radiates will actually reflect off white clothing, bouncing back to your body to keep you toastier. Not a bad theory, but it's not tested on humans. So, the answer is — it doesn't make a huge difference whether you're wearing black or white in hot weather. |