Imagine teaching in a sauna. All day. Fully dressed.
As soon as you walk in you and your students start to sweat. If you accidentally touch a piece of paper it sticks to you. Ceiling fans just stir the air. A/C sometimes makes a difference, and sometimes clearly gives it up as an impossible job.
Leave the sauna at 1:30 to have a large lunch with lots of carbs - rice & cous cous.
Back in to the sauna. Now throw some water on the stones to crank up the temperature and humidity.
You have never seen a post lunch student slump like this.
The only way to manage it was to get them up on their feet and doing exercises (100 ways to say 'I love you' the clear favourite).
After almost three weeks of this (along with the prep work outside of the course) I feel like I've been steam cleaned and knackered.
And I might have broken the students.
If you want to know more about the mechanics of being boiled alive (who knew about dew point) then read below. The graphs for August /September show 65-100% humidity, 23-34% dew point. Dew points become oppressive around 25°C.
As soon as you walk in you and your students start to sweat. If you accidentally touch a piece of paper it sticks to you. Ceiling fans just stir the air. A/C sometimes makes a difference, and sometimes clearly gives it up as an impossible job.
Leave the sauna at 1:30 to have a large lunch with lots of carbs - rice & cous cous.
Back in to the sauna. Now throw some water on the stones to crank up the temperature and humidity.
You have never seen a post lunch student slump like this.
The only way to manage it was to get them up on their feet and doing exercises (100 ways to say 'I love you' the clear favourite).
After almost three weeks of this (along with the prep work outside of the course) I feel like I've been steam cleaned and knackered.
And I might have broken the students.
If you want to know more about the mechanics of being boiled alive (who knew about dew point) then read below. The graphs for August /September show 65-100% humidity, 23-34% dew point. Dew points become oppressive around 25°C.
Humidity is an important factor in determining how weather conditions feel to a person experiencing them. Hot and humid days feel even hotter than hot and dry days because the high level of water content in humid air discourages the evaporation of sweat from a person's skin.
When reading the graph below, keep in mind that the hottest part of the day tends to be the least humid, so the daily low (brown) traces are more relevant for understanding daytime comfort than the daily high (blue) traces, which typically occur during the night. Applying that observation, the least humid month of the last 12 months was January with an average daily low humidity of 16%, and the most humid month was September with an average daily low humidity of 74%.
But it is important to keep in mind that humidity does not tell the whole picture and the dew point is often a better measure of how comfortable a person will find a given set of weather conditions. Please see the next section for continued discussion of this point.
When reading the graph below, keep in mind that the hottest part of the day tends to be the least humid, so the daily low (brown) traces are more relevant for understanding daytime comfort than the daily high (blue) traces, which typically occur during the night. Applying that observation, the least humid month of the last 12 months was January with an average daily low humidity of 16%, and the most humid month was September with an average daily low humidity of 74%.
But it is important to keep in mind that humidity does not tell the whole picture and the dew point is often a better measure of how comfortable a person will find a given set of weather conditions. Please see the next section for continued discussion of this point.
Dew point is the temperature below which water vapor will condense into liquid water. It is therefore also related to the rate of evaporation of liquid water. Since the evaporation of sweat is an important cooling mechanism for the human body, the dew point is an important measurement for understanding how dry, comfortable, or humid a given set of weather conditions will feel.
Generally speaking, dew points below 10°C will feel a bit dry to some people, but comfortable to people accustomed to dry conditions; dew points from 10°C to 20°C are fairly comfortable to most people, and dew points above 20°C are increasingly uncomfortable, becoming oppressive around 25°C.
Generally speaking, dew points below 10°C will feel a bit dry to some people, but comfortable to people accustomed to dry conditions; dew points from 10°C to 20°C are fairly comfortable to most people, and dew points above 20°C are increasingly uncomfortable, becoming oppressive around 25°C.