Why Your Beer Gets So Warm On Humid Days
Can Condensation János Balázs via Flickr/cc licensedAnd what this can teach us about koozies--and climate change. Today in Very Important Science: beer koozies are even more crucial than you think. When you pull a beer out of the fridge, the condensation that builds up on the outside of the can releases heat, warming your drink twice as much in humid weather compared with dry weather, researchers found recently. Beer koozies, you see, are priceless protectors of the cold. Researcher Dale Durran, of the University of Washington, arrived at this conclusion while trying to teach concepts like evaporative cooling and heat caused by condensation; he figured a cool drink on a sultry day served as a good example. He calculated how much warmth comes from water droplets on the outside of a can. Water just four-thousandths of an inch thick could warm the can's contents quickly, he found. In New Orleans,...