Clothing Materials ================== To: sar-l@listserv.islandnet.com From: "Steven G. Howard" Subject: Re: Winter Cloths Forwarded by: sar-l@listserv.islandnet.com Send reply to: sar-l@listserv.islandnet.com I was following the thread on clothing and someone mentioned a demo they had done that showed how cotton absorbs water compared to wool. I went one step further a few weeks ago in preparation for a talk I was to give for New Mexico SAR teams. I took one gallon jugs and filled them with hot water. I then wrapped one in a wool shirt, one in a similar thickness pile shirt, one in a cotton flannel shirt and one I left "naked". I then showed them with cold water in the shower for 5 minutes to simulate a rain storm and then turned a fan on them. I measured the temperature of each every five minutes for one hour. I have included the results below as a table and attached a nice pretty Excel version 5.0 chart for those that can decode attachments. As you can see you are better off naked than wearing wet cotton. Maybe you can show your team members the chart to help convince them to wear something other than cotton. Time Wool Pile Naked Cotton 0 min 114.5 114.5 114.5 114.5 5 min 111.8 110.3 108.4 109.2 10 min 110.2 108.4 106 106.2 15 min 109.1 106.6 104 103.5 20 min 107.8 104.9 101.9 100.3 25 min 106.7 103.5 99.9 97.4 30 min 105.7 101.7 97.9 94.9 35 min 104.6 100.3 96.1 92.7 40 min 103.5 98.6 94.5 90.5 45 min 102.4 97.2 93.1 88.9 50 min 101.3 95.8 91.6 87.2 55 min 100.3 94.5 90.4 85.6 60 min 99.4 93.1 89.1 84.4