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Anti-Frostidigitation: Heatpipe Gloves 324

Posted by michael from the windchill-of-minus-20 dept.
Hettinga writes "A little casemod couture this morning, courtesy of Hongbin Ma, a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri. He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits. 'Each glove contains five small heat pipes, one for each finger, that are about 14 inches long and 1 mm x 2 mm in the cross section. Each pipe consists of three sections: an evaporating section, which is attached to the upper arm area; an adiabatic section, which is between the finger area and the arm area; and the condensing section, which is attached to the finger area.' Coming soon to a half-pipe near you..."
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Anti-Frostidigitation: Heatpipe Gloves

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  • Seriously? (Score:3, Funny)

    by raceface ( 715858 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:09PM (#8058027)
    I'll take two.

  • Too bad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bperkins ( 12056 ) * on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:10PM (#8058041) Homepage Journal
    nature didn't provide us with some kind of fluid that automatically circulates throughout our body to distribute warmth and nutrients.

    • Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:14PM (#8058126) Homepage
      Too bad nature decides to shut it off in the hands when it gets cold.

      I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone. But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.

      --
      In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]

      American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]

      • Re:Too bad... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Uma Thurman ( 623807 )
        One of the leading reasons people come inside when it's cold out is because the pain from cold hands and feet gets very annoying.

        If our hands and feet remained nice and toasty, we would lose a little bit of heat, certainly. But, we'd also stay outside much longer than we would have otherwise, and that's the difference that could kill you. You'd slip into hypothermia muttering incoherently to yourself "at least my little piggies are nice and toasty."

        • Furthermore ... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Greedo ( 304385 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:40PM (#8059282) Homepage Journal
          These gloves work by shifting some of the heat from more core parts of your body to your extremities.

          So, your body notices the core temperature dropping and says "Crikey! Better shut off those extremities even more."

          So, aren't these gloves self defeating? And possibly dangerous because they will lower your core temp while simultaneously reducing the options your body has to naturally fight that drop.

          • Re:Furthermore ... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by russellh ( 547685 )
            So, your body notices the core temperature dropping and says "Crikey! Better shut off those extremities even more." So, aren't these gloves self defeating?

            I ask you.. why are your hands warming it mittens than in gloves? Are mittens self-defeating?

            • Re:Furthermore ... (Score:3, Informative)

              by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
              Mittens stop your hands losing heat. The heatpipe gloves take heat away from one part of the body and move it to another (less essential) part, and probably increase the total heat loss a bit.

              The heatpipe gloves would reduce your core body temperature. Mittens would not.

          • Re:Furthermore ... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Cheeko ( 165493 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:32PM (#8059824) Homepage Journal
            I think this is a problem of human evolution versus current technology. Currently a person can buy a coat to keep their core nice and toasty, but extremeties (hands, feet, ears) are much more sucessptible to the elements. In this case the device is pulling heat away from an area that is easily insulated, to heat an area that is difficult to insulate.

            Additionally this could be very handy for jobs that require people to be outdoors, yet use their hands. In the recent cold spell here in New England, I felt terrible for the toll collectors, construction workers, and police who could bundle up, but still couldn't wear heavy heavy gloves since they needed to use their hands. This technology would allow for a very light weight set of gloves that would allow mobility of the hands, while insulating the rest of the body as mush as needed.

          • Re:Furthermore ... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by mangu ( 126918 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:58PM (#8060078)
            These gloves work by shifting some of the heat from more core parts of your body to your extremities.


            Alcohol has the same effect. It dilates the blood vessels in your skin, making you feel warmer at the cost of increased heat loss. That, coupled with a general loss of sensibility and reasoning, causes many deaths in places where the temperature falls below freezing.

      • I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone. But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.

        Yup. It's about 15 below here right, now. Definitely makes a difference.

      • You're right, but I wonder how well a (presumably passieve) circulation system can really work. I guess I might be surprised. It just struck me as kind of ungainly and bizarre.

      • Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pla ( 258480 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:01PM (#8058808) Journal
        I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone

        Let's say you don't have the option of going somewhere warm (ie, inside to a nice toasty fire)... Which do you have a more critical (ie, life-preserving) need for - To keep using your large muscles (legs, upper arms), which serves both the purpose of generating heat and might eventually move you to somewhere warmer; or, manual dexterity, which would only really help if you needed to operate a book of matches (something that didn't exist for 99.99999% of human history)?

        Our bodies decrease blood flow to the extremities for precisely that reason. Additionally, assuming the worst, we can live without a few fingers or toes or even an earlobe; Sacrificing them to keep our core body temperature high enough seems like a viable tradeoff under extreme circumstances. The fact that we now have thinsulate and heat-packs and almost always a warm place to go nearby, so having our fingers nice and toasty seems more useful than preventing the small heat loss from them, had no effect on how we evolved.


        But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.

        Although this may seem in direct contradiction to my point above, I mention it only for clarity... Not all inherited traits "evolved" in the natural-selection sense. One of the fundamental ideas behind evolution says that mutations occur essentially at random, and those that increase our odds of reproducing (which dying young does not) get passed on. However, those traits that have no effect whatsoever on our chances of reproducing can also get passed on, just by blind chance. For a trivial example, Alzheimer's disease - It doesn't affect people until they've passed their reproductive prime, so as debilitating as it seems in later life, it doesn't reduce its own chances of remaining in the population.

        • Re:Too bad... (Score:2, Informative)

          by trimbach ( 143537 )

          ...or, manual dexterity, which would only really help if you needed to operate a book of matches (something that didn't exist for 99.99999% of human history)?

          Not quite. Even considering a generous definition of "human history" spanning 1 million years, if matches weren't available for 99.99999% of "human history" then they weren't invented till a little more than a month ago. :-)

          You probably mean "99.9823%" instead, as chemical friction matches were invented in 1827. Decimal points are powerful things

        • Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Surur ( 694693 )
          Not all evolution happened in homo sapiens. I would assume most of our autonomic system developed in the rodents from the Jurassic, and were slowly refined over the next 50 million years. I'm sure for an animal padding through snow or ice it was *very essential* not to lose heat through their feet. What has happened since has been mere fiddling at the edges. Good thing we are now getting ready to take charge of our own evolution (and hack out all the legacy code such as this )

      • Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Funny)

        by martyros ( 588782 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:21PM (#8059032)
        See, I can understand the body's reaction, saving the vital organs by sacrificing the hands. But there are times -- for example, when I'm running, or doing some other physical activity [Yes, I just flagged myself as an atypical geek] that my torso is overheated -- I take off my hat, unzip my shirt, and am still sweating; but my hands and feet are still icy cold.

        You'd think at least the temp-regulation system would be smart enough to shunt some of that extra heat off to your hands before busting out the sweat... But I guess the right hand doesn't know what the left lung is doing. =)

      • I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone. But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.

        Probably preserving core temperature is more important that protecting the fingers and toes--at least you then have a chance of keeping going long enough to find shelter. Birds have a more clever countercurrent heat exchanger solution. The arteries and veins run together, so that the venous return is warmed by the arteries, reducing loss of heat
      • > I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone.

        Well, if your fingers are too cold to light a match (which can happen)...

    • Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:21PM (#8058226)
      Nature did. Its called coffee.

    • Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hiryuu ( 125210 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:22PM (#8058232)

      There are those with poor circulation in the extremities whose bodies have some trouble warming hands and feet back up once they've gotten cold. Speaking as one of them, once my feet have gone cold, they stay that way for ages, even after getting into a warm (or even hot) envinronment, changing shoes/socks for warmer/dryer pairs, etc.

      • > There are those with poor circulation in the extremities

        I have no idea why this was modded flamebait, unless someone has a personal vendetta against those with poor circulation...

        Anyway, many of those people are that way because they are (or recently were) smokers. My father has poor circulation in his legs because of weight. Some have it because of a weak heart, and some just "because." A suggestion is warm water. Submerse your cold extremities in warm (not hot) water, and they should warm up pr

    • Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sugar and acid ( 88555 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8058280)
      This is short circuiting nature, basically as we get cold extremities like the hands and fingers have the blood circulation restricted to conserve heat so our core body temp stays high. Fingers are far more robust in surviving cold than say our brains, they are also more expendable, and they also have a larger surface area to mass ratio so are costly to keep at body temperature anyway.

      What it really means is that the garment that this is in is less thermally efficient than the same garment without (you will lose heat faster). It maybe handy for delicate work were you need thin gloves and warm hands in a cold environment with the only other real option is an active heating system power by batteries.
      • I think it will be beneficial any time you have cold fingers and are willing to sacrifice some warmth from your forearms to get it. If the overall thermal efficiency of your garment isn't a huge issue, then these gloves present a reasonable tradeoff.

        Maybe it's just me, but I tend to have plenty of extra body heat around my torso and limbs, but my feet and hands still get cold. I'd like gloves like this.
      • At -35 (last week) before the windchill (-50 with) even these gloves won't cut it for any extended period of time.

        That's why you can buy wind-proof mitts (treated leather) normally used for snowmobiling. Less surface area to lose heat from, the fingers can keep each other warm, etc. Also, if you have to do something by hand, you can pop your hand out of the mitt, do what you have to do, and put your hand back in real quick compared to a glove.

        My dogs (St. Bernard and Newfie) would be happy to stay outside

    • If its one thing we slashdotters have seen time and time again, its that nature can be improved upon. I mean, kidney stones and colon cancer are but two examples of someone in the design department sleeping at the wheel!
    • This would be great for someone who gets cold and stiff extremeties in otherwise warm environments, where taking heat away from the torso isn't dangerous. In the winter I can have a space heating blowing full blast on me, I'm sweating...but still my fingers are icicles. Guess my gender! (and I'm young and healthy...I don't get it.)

  • Great... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    now my upper arms are cold.
    • Great... now my upper arms are cold.

      Which bring up the question: WHY do your hands get cold, when you have a perfectly good heat-transfer medium built in?

      Answer: Evolutionarily, when your environment gets cold it's important to maintain the temperature of your brain and core body organs, to keep you alive. When those are in jepoardy, your body may sacrifice heating, first of your hands and feet, then of your arms and legs, and risk damaging them, as a better tradeoff than risking DYING, or brain or or
      • You are missing the point. This device works outside of the skin, and only transfers ambient heat.

        How would moving heat that would go out into the atmosphere to your hands harm you in any way?
  • is that his next project?

  • Cool (Score:4, Funny)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:11PM (#8058052) Journal
    I could use some of these gloves for Anti-Burnination [homestarrunner.com]!
  • That sounds like an idea that could equally apply to those with lower circulation, not just those on the slopes / in the cold.

  • What about hyperthermia? (Score:3, Informative)

    by raceface ( 715858 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:12PM (#8058070)
    If you wore these long enough in cold weather (-20C or less) would you risk decreasing your core temperature to critical levels?
    • Perhaps. However, in our society, the line between losing your fingers and losing your life is probably fairly slim; if you're outside in the cold, you're either completely fucked or outside by choice.

      Ie you're not risking much to keep comfortable: if you end up needing that extra heat, you're likely in the fucked category.

      That was not so back in the bad old days, when curling into a ball and huddling behind a tree was state-of-the-art thermal protection.
    • Only if the other garments you were wearing were inadequate for the task of maintaining your body temp despite the extra heat loss to your hands.

      But if you're wearing these gloves, but aren't otherwise wearing clothes appropriate to -20, then yeah, you might get hypothermia.

      On the other hand, hyperthermia is unlikely to be a problem caused by these gloves in -20C weather. :)

  • Inverse overclocking... (Score:5, Funny)

    by vudufixit ( 581911 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:12PM (#8058078)
    My fingers stiffen up and I can't type very well in chilly air. I'm rated at 73 WPM at standard room temperature. Imagine the productivity boost with these babies on! At least 5-10 WPM for sure!
    • Ah. There you go; dissipate the heat from the CPU into your hands; transfers the heat from where you don't want it, to where you do.

      Makes the whole wireless keyboard a bit useless, but there you go.

  • I am concerned.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This will negate the very positive Darwinian influence on our gene pool WRT "People who are too fscking stupid to come in out of the cold." ;-)

  • There's an easier way... (Score:4, Informative)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:12PM (#8058085) Homepage
    Sounds neat and all, but they've already shown that maintaining a certain temp in your torso area will help keep those extremities warm. I'd think it would use heatpads on your chest.

    Damon,

    • Re:There's an easier way... (Score:4, Informative)

      by metroid composite ( 710698 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:16PM (#8058153) Homepage Journal
      As someone who lives in a cold climate, I have to say covering your ears (and generally your head) is generally more important than covering your torso. The brain controls where heat flow goes, and it's a very self-centered organ.
      • As someone else who lives in a cold climate (-20F windchill today) yes, I agree that it's good to keep your ears warm, but you'll find that heating your torso area will help keep those extremities warm as well.

        Damon,
      • Yeah, right. So when you go outside you grab your ear-muffs in preference to your coat do you?
        • > So when you go outside you grab your ear-muffs in preference to your coat do you?

          Actually you'd be surprised. I'm not advocating anyone tossing their coat aside and just wearing a hat all day but the effect is definetly there.. wearing something over your ears has a big impact on how warm you feel.

          I suspect it's mostly psychological though, because despite how you feel your body would still be susceptible to hypothermia.

          Growing up in alaska, I would often just put on a hat when going outside briefly
    • I'd think it would be easier to use heatpads.

      Oops.

  • Really? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:12PM (#8058089)
    He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits.

    If he has 'developed' these gloves, I would like to see a picture of them. It looks like these are just as 'developed' as those night-vision contacts over at Popular Science.
    • Why do people blindly trust the slashdot writeup and not even read the article? Also, why do the mods automatically mod it up? Seems like the opposite of what the moderation should be.
      Anyway, the article clearly states that he is developing the gloves, not that he has developed them. Also, there is a picture of a supposed prototype on the page, but I can't tell what the hell it is.

  • Aerogel (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SuperGrut ( 452229 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:13PM (#8058094)
    Or we could just make gloves out of Aerogel.

    • Re:Aerogel (Score:5, Funny)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:22PM (#8058231)
      I can certainly see somebody making a hard suit for central Antarctica lined with Aerogel. Can you imagine? "Bob's lost in that blizzard! We have to find him in less than a month or he'll starve!"

      • Re:Aerogel (Score:4, Funny)

        by Dr Reducto ( 665121 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:31PM (#8058378) Journal
        It would really be: We have to find him in four hours because he'll overheat in that suit without someone to get him out!
        • There'd have to be some kind of regulation system. Maybe several heat-pipe radiators on the suit, with closable aerogel flaps over them, so you could adjust the heat loss/retention? I'm thinking non-electrical, just because you don't want poor Bob to die from heat stress out in the Antarctic blizzard because he stumbled on a rock and broke his suit's computer.

          • I think that if Bob is going to have all these problems, he should just stay home. Maybe sending somebody smarter would make sense, one that doesn't get lost or freak out with a broken computer.

            -Tim
  • Make heatpipe socks first! Gloves can wait, My feet haven't had good circulation since I learned my first Regular Expression!
  • I thought heat-pipes were driven by the pressure differential that results from gravity. The lower end of the pipe (wrt gravity) is the high pressure partition of the vapor-compression cycle and therefore is the evaporator or the part of the system that absorbes heat. The upper end is the condensor which release heat. Therefore for this system to work you would need to keep you hands above your head all the time.

    • Keep those hands down (Score:5, Informative)

      by OmniGeek ( 72743 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8058277)
      Nope. Heatpipes use a fluid and working pressure such that the fluid is almost-boiling at the optimum operating temperature. Heat one end, and the fluid boils, vapor diffuses rapidly to the other end, condenses giving up heat of vaporization, and is absorbed into the wick that runs through the pipe. It then goes back to the other end by capillary action.

      That said, it IS more efficient if the bottom end is the "hot" end, 'cause the rising warm fluid vapor and the down-flowing condensed fluid are both assisted by gravity. However, gravity is NOT an essential part of the process (some satellite instruments use heatpipes to keep-em cool in free-fall, for example).

      A friend of mine does heat pipes as a business: koolpipes.com [koolpipes.com]

  • No, didn't RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:14PM (#8058119)
    But a while back Discovery had a mini series about extreme survival, and one of the shows was about artic survival. The main character, so to speak, tried on an electrical vest of sort, which heated his torso. This allowed him to stay in a -40(I think) degree windtunnel with I think 5 mph winds for more than three hours without losing any dexterity in his fingers.

    When the guy who supervised the dexterity and mental acuity test took of his gloves, it took less than three minutes for his hands to be freezing cold, while the infrared camera clearly showed that the main characters fingers were still warm.

    Seemed fairly conclusive to me, that the trick was keeping the torso heated, as that would prevent the problems, these gloves are supposed to fix.

    Besides - if you can have warm dextorous fingers without wearing gloves, I'd go for that any day of the week, as long as I'm not working with objects, that can hurt my hands.

  • Hand warmers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nodwick ( 716348 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:16PM (#8058147)
    Instead of just reshuffling your body heat around with high-tech gloves (and, presumably, making your fingers warmer at the expense of your arms), why not just pop in some of those 99 cent hand warmers [healthyharvest.com] you can get at places like Costco? We've used these everywhere from the ski slopes to watching the countdown on New Year's. They're cheap, disposable, and widely available.
    • reusable > disposable

      We do have a pollution problem you know. And it's less of a paim in the ass than stocking up and hand warmers and inserting themm and trying to maintain a stable temperature.

  • it can help much more than sports! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:19PM (#8058200) Homepage
    my GF is a Raynaud's sufferer and if she get's her hands in anything cold it can stop the circulation in her fingers and feet. causing frostbite even in warmer temperatures like 40degF.

    this would make life for a Raynaud's afflicted person much easier on day's like today when it's 6degF outside and expected to be -1 later tonight.
  • This reminds me of the work suits the First Hundred used in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy [orionsarm.com]

    Not quite complete spacesuits, but enough to keep you alive and working while on the surface of the red planet. They included a lattice of warming wires beneath a flexible exterior.

    Next up: harvesting bodily fluids [redmeat.com] with a suit.

  • There is a reson that your body does this. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jhines0042 ( 184217 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:23PM (#8058251) Journal
    That reason is: It is better to lose a finger than a lung.

    Don't be stupid... keep your body warm first.

  • Keep your torso warm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by me.at.work ( 249034 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8058271)
    It's actually better to keep your torso warm.
    The draining of blood and heat from your hands and feet happens when your core temperature starts dropping. This is done to protect the vital organs, heart, liver etc over the non-vital, hands, feet. If you can keep your core temperature normal you can actually work without gloves even below zero (celsius). This because the body is warm and needn't cut the heatloss from hands or feet.
    There was a good documentary on the Discovery channel about the very subject not long ago.
    So, while heatpumping gloves seem nice, I'd go with keeping my body warm and be rid of any gloves hindering my hands.

    Yeah, bring on the puns..
    • Wrong! I spend my whole winter biking in -20 (Saskatoon, Canada). My biggest problems are keeping my extremities warm. I usually wear big double mitts, but leave my jacket open to exhaust the heat and moisture from my body. I would love to transfer that excess heat to my hands and feet! Things would be different if I wasn't generating so much heat...
    • While I agree with your point, I believe it mostly applies to stationary situations. In situations where you're moving on a motorcycle/snowmobile/etc. very quickly and in freezing temperatures, I could see this as a great improvement in glove technology. I, for one, welcome our new glove-making overlords. :^)

    • It really varies... (Score:3, Informative)

      by JMZero ( 449047 )
      I live in Edmonton, Canada. As such, I have to regard phrases like "even below zero (celsius)" with some amusement. Keeping your core warm certainly does help the extremities, but is not a full solution. Walking to school, I remember many times when my hands/ears/feet were freezing while I was sweating inside a huge coat.

      I think this likely varies in different people, temperature, wind, activity, etc.. There's lots of situations where I would have been happy to move heat from arm to hand, and when my co
    • Didn't see the Discovery channel show you mention, but if this testing wasn't done on a large enough population sample I wouldn't conclude that everyone works this way... Seems that a lot of people's body's do respond to chill at the extremities by reducing circulation, so in some people maybe it isn't just core body temperature, but also skin temperature that causes this effect. In those people any way of bringing additional warmth to the hands and feet would be of benefit. Although, seems like this m
  • ... where's my stilsuit? Gonna be a hot one!

  • Warmest parts of the body (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Trolling4Dollars ( 627073 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:27PM (#8058309) Journal
    Wouldn't the genital region be more appropriate (albeit somewhat less convenient) for this sort of thing? It's designed to keep the "stuff of life" at a healthy 98F. Just have the heatpipe fitted into one's pants with one end nestled against the vital organs and the other woven into pants pockets. Imagine that... a whole new life for the phrase "pocket pool".

  • this is *nuts*! (Score:3, Informative)

    by myowntrueself ( 607117 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:30PM (#8058352)
    The reason your hands get cold and numb isn't because they are actually so cold (umm sort of; bear with me); its because your core temperature drops and your thermal maintenance systems shut down blood flow to the extremities. Loss of blood flow in the hands results in the numbness and loss of dexterity.

    If you wear a heated vest (or even just keep a charcoal-burning hand warmer in a chest pocket (nice and low tech)) your hands don't get all cold and numb; they stay dexterous and warm. And without *any* gloves at all.

    Ok so *serious* below zero temperatures will still result in skin loss if you *touch* something... :)


  • neat idea, moving the heat that way. here's another application of the same notion. (which i haven't yet seen) they should make a jacket/gloves that warms from a motorcycle cylendar head.

    if anyone's ridden a motorbike in cold weather, you know what i mean. something that took the heat from the cylendar head would be a gem.. at 70 mph wind chill in 20 degree weather, nothing from your armpit's gonna help those fingers. many's the day i've ridden one handed in that kind of weather, holding my left hand

  • Condutive textiles (Score:2, Interesting)

    by teneighty ( 671401 )
    Anyone who has spent time in extremely cold conditions can attest to the desire for warm gloves. The body just doesn't "do enough" to protect the extremities (at least at first - I find my fingers get so cold that I'm in severe pain, and then suddenly they warm up. There's probably some medical explanation for this - anyone?).

    An interesting solution I heard about was conductive textiles - fabrics that act as heating elements (i.e. they're not simply a wire - wires break easily and consume a lot of current
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What about mittens? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:47PM (#8058591)
    Well since they are polyester I imagine that they are only for walking around.

    These gloves should be made with gortex and should be marketed to people that work in the harsh cold and snow.

    Unless you actually need all 5 fingers, gloves are really kind'a dumb. Mittens (and yes, people make cool mittens now), are much much warmer then gloves since your fingers are lumped together. Anyone that's lived in cold weather, or is an avid snow rider will tell you that.

    These why spend money on expensive Nintendo Power Gloves when you could pick up a pair of trendy mittens for fraction of the price?

  • goretex+thinsulate (Score:2, Informative)

    by OglinTatas ( 710589 )
    There is a reason that the body restricts blood to the extremities in extreme cold. It's probably better to get a bit of frostbite than hypothermia. Frostbite may cost you a few fingers, but hypothermia makes you confused and uncoordinated, until eventually you lay down in the snow to sleep (and die).
    These gloves may be thinner lighter and warmer than gortex gloves, but goretex you can take off when you have to do delicate work (starting a fire) and you can put your hands in your armpits if they get too

  • It's a passive system (Score:5, Informative)

    by HoldenCaulfield ( 25660 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:00PM (#8058794) Journal
    A lot of readers seem to be missing the point here. The real advantage of this prototype is that it's passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing. It keeps your fingers warmer by absorbing some heat from your body (that would eventually have ended up in the air) and transferring the heat to your fingertips.

    So yes, hand warmers are cheap and effective, but they'll die after a few hours once the reaction finishes.

    Keeping your core temp high is a nice idea, but let's say you already have a nice coat and things - I think having some gloves that would passively heat my fingers would be nicely appreciated. Their was a post about how if it's a matter of life-or-death, you should maintain your core temp, but I think the more realistic application of these gloves would be to maintain comfort of your digits when you know you're going to be outside.

    Again, the system is passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing at all. You'd put them on and forget about it.
  • Our body was designed quite smartly to conserve heat when the temperature drops. Circulation decreases to those parts of the body that are not necessarily important for immediate survival (a.k.a your fingers, toes, tip of your nose, and other protruding misc!) This ensures the maximum amount of heat for places that really need it - your core (a.k.a heart and lungs.) If you are pumping heat from your upper arm to your fingers you may actually be working against your body's own natural defenses.
  • There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.

    -- oldy but goody

  • This would be useful in business after shaking hands around in a meeting with the cold souls for corporate America.
  • No, I didn't RTFA, but if these things are thin enough to let me type, while wearing them, then I'm buying a pair as a present for my wife.

    I'll never have to hear, "AAAAAAUUUUGHHH!!!! COLD HANDS!!!!!" again.

  • Opera gloves? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by huie ( 148646 )
    The interesting thing (to me) is the development of flexible heat pipes. I'm assuming that it uses tubes stuffed with something with great capillary action, maybe CoolMax fabric or something. Don't know if it really needs to be aligned all that well- would probably work better if it were, of course. Either that, or just extrude the tubes with a lot of fins inside for good capillary action. Further developments would be to fabricate a material/plastic with really fine vanes in it, sew it into a bladder shap

  • A cure! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Pragmatix ( 688158 )
    Quick, adapt this thing to underpants and we can do away with 'shrinkage'!

  • Cayenne Pepper (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Colymbosathon ecplec ( 729842 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:42PM (#8059300) Homepage
    I've lived in Alaska since I was just a pup, and one of the first things I learned from an old-timer was the use of cayenne pepper. I sprinkled it on my toes, and put it into capsules I bought at the 'health food store'. I won't get into how it works to increase blood flow, but it does the trick. Having been exposed to wind chills in excess of -150 below zero, I still have all my fingers and toes, although one time the plastic thingy came off my glasses and the steel from the frame froze a hole into the side of my nose. Unlike black pepper, cayenne is not an irritant, although if you get some on a sensitive area (like if you forget to wash your hands before you pee), you'll be wondering WTF?

    Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]

  • This sorta reminds me of 180's Exhale Heating System [180s.com] in their gloves. Has anyone used these gloves before? How are they? Seems like such a simple idea that would definitely be nice if it works.
  • Seems to me this is the perfect solution to someone who's hands are always cold while in the office, and also wants to overclock their computer. For that matter, you could add some support in the wrist section and do a number on carpal tunnel syndrome as well.

    Now, we get those shoes with the crystalline soles that generate a little electricity every time you flex them and...

    You know, I think writing this [blogspot.com] burned out more brain cells than I realized ;-)

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