It has been hot and humid where I live. Summer is just getting started, August will probably be hotter. How can I stay cool while walking to work?
I just read about experiment to find out what color of clothing will keep you the coolest in the summer sun, conducted by researcher Toshiaki Ichinose from Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies. Ichinose set nine mannequin torsos in the summer sun, each wearing a different colored polo shirt. After five minutes, the surface temperatures of the fabrics were checked.
The white shirt was the coolest, with a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (about 86 degrees Fahrenheit), which was about the same as the air tempurature during the test. Next coolest was yellow, followed by gray, red, purple, blue, green, dark green, and black. Dark green and black both had surface temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), more than 50 percent hotter than the white shirt.
I was surprised that red was cooler than blue. Normally, I think of red as a hot color and blue as a cool color. Apparently that is not true when in the summer sun. This is an interesting study and I will think about what color to wear to work tomorrow.
