Timeline for It's freezing, you're cold and have to pee. Should you hold it as long as possible to conserve heat energy?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 18, 2022 at 16:07 | comment | added | crasic | @cbeleites Thank you for the note to further clarify the thermochemistry. | |
| Feb 17, 2022 at 18:54 | comment | added | cbeleites | ...eating snow is what is worse in a given situation: dehydration vs. hypothermia. Note that the need for eating snow (i.e. no way to melt it with external energy) tends to happen in situations where there is also a problem concerning edible energy. And btw. the latent heat to melt a given amount of water is only between 1/6 and 1/7 compared to the latent heat for evaporating the same amount. In cold (and therefore dry) air you loose considerably more energy via the breathing water loss. | |
| Feb 17, 2022 at 18:46 | comment | added | cbeleites | It is true that due to the huge amount of latent heat needed to melt snow it is always preferrable to drink (liquid) water if at all possible. However, "the amount of water that your body "consumes" in the metabolism necessary to heat the snow to core temp is more than the amount of water you injested" is wrong: metabolizing ("burning") carbohydrates or lipids produces water rather than consuming it. Protein metabolism is a bit more complicated in that manner (you need sufficient urine production here, but in many circumstances that doesn't translate into excess water). The tradeoff with ... | |
| Feb 17, 2022 at 18:39 | comment | added | cbeleites | These specific 100 - 200 g of body weight do not contribute at all to producing heat. At most, they have a little bit of heat capacity - which, however, is of negligible effect since body temperature is tightly regulated and 100 - 200 ml of urine are only in the permille range of the total heat capacity of an adult. In that respect, there is no difference between putting the urine out of your body or putting a bag of cookies out of your inner pocket. | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 15:14 | comment | added | crasic | Thanks @fgysin my first draft originally said mL and I changed it incorrectly , your comment is spot on. | |
| Feb 7, 2022 at 10:29 | vote | accept | jirislav | ||
| Feb 7, 2022 at 10:25 | history | edited | Toby Speight | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Spelling fixes
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| Feb 7, 2022 at 8:45 | comment | added | fgysin | That should be 100-200g, and not mg. If your only urinating milligrams you have another problem. | |
| Feb 5, 2022 at 18:34 | comment | added | Kate Gregory | the other part may be that you can't be sure if someone peed on that snow last week, so it's best to boil it to be on the safe side | |
| Feb 4, 2022 at 15:34 | history | answered | crasic | CC BY-SA 4.0 |