Photo: Teona Swift

Is cotton balls a good insulator of cold?

Cotton is a great thermal insulator – as long as it's dry. Once wet, cotton becomes a poor insulator and does a poor job of preventing hypothermia -hence the old adage, “cotton kills”.

openoregon.pressbooks.pub - Cotton Kills – Body Physics: Motion to Metabolism

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The number of molecular collisions increases with increasing contact area ( ), so the rate of heat conduction depends on the contact area. More collisions, and thus more time, will be needed to transfer the same amount of heat across a thicker material, so heat transfer rate also depends on thickness, or length across which the heat is transferred ( ). This model explains why thick clothing is warmer than thin clothing in winters, and why thin people are typically more susceptible to hypothermia.

Temperature Difference

If the object temperatures are the same, the net heat transfer rate falls to zero, and thermal equilibrium is achieved. As the difference in temperature increases, the average kinetic energy transferred from fast to slow molecules during each collision also increases. Therefore the temperature difference also affects the rate of heat transfer by conduction .

Thermal Conductivity

Lastly, some materials conduct thermal energy faster than others. In general, good conductors of electricity (metals like copper, aluminum, gold, and silver) are also good heat conductors, whereas insulators of electricity (wood, plastic, and rubber) are poor heat conductors. The effect of a material’s properties on conductive heat transfer rate is described by the coefficient of thermal conductivity ( ), which is sometimes shortened to just thermal conductivity. The following table shows values of for some common materials in units of Watts , per meter, per Kelvin ( ). Thermal Conductivities of Common Substances Substance Thermal conductivity ( ) Silver 420 Copper 390 Gold 318 Aluminum 220 Steel iron 80 Steel (stainless) 14 Ice 2.2 Glass (average) 0.84 Concrete brick 0.84 Water 0.6 Fatty tissue (without blood) 0.2 Asbestos 0.16 Plasterboard 0.16 Wood 0.08–0.16 Snow (dry) 0.10 Cork 0.042 Glass wool 0.042 Wool 0.04 Down feathers 0.025 Air 0.023 Styrofoam 0.010

Conduction Equation

We can summarize all of the factors effecting the conductive heat transfer rate, which is an amount of energy transferred per time, in a single diagram: The rate of heat transfer across a material with temperature on one side and temperature on the other can be modeled by the conduction equation:

(1)

The rate of heat transfer ( )refers to an amount of energy transferred per unit time so it has the same units as power ( ). The term power is usually applied to a rate of transformation of energy from one form to another, but heat is a transfer of thermal energy from one place another, not a change in type of energy, thus we stick with instead of as the notation for this rate. This notation also reminds us that if we want to know how much energy was transferred during a certain time, we need to multiply the heat rate by the time.

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We can see from the conduction equation that combining thickness (loft) with low conductivity provides the greatest insulating effect. Goose down is the gold-standard insulation clothing for extreme-cold environments because it recovers loft after being compressed and it has low conductivity. As with most insulating materials, the effectiveness of down at reducing conduction is not due to the low conductivity of the feathers themselves, but rather their ability to trap air which has a very low conductivity. Double-pane windows, Styrofoam, animal hair, and the fiberglass insulation used in buildings all rely on this same strategy of trapping air to provide insulation . Everyday Example: Down Insulation Let’s compare the insulating properties of a cotton sweatshirt and a down jacket, such as the one worn in the photograph below. We will start with the conduction equation: The outside temperature was about and skin temperature is roughly , so the temperature difference was about . When dry, the down jacket pictured is roughly thick, which . The thermal conductivity of dry down is roughly . Using the methods in Chapter 17 we estimate the surface area of the upper body to be . Entering these values into the equation we find: So heat loss rate through the upper body in this situation is 30 W. That means 15 J of thermal energy is released to the environment as heat through the upper body each second. The typical human thermal power is 100 W so it appears that there is plenty of thermal energy available to maintain temperature. However, the 15 W value we found does not account for heat loss from the lower body, which we can see from the picture were not covered with down. In fact the single thin layer worn on the legs easily allowed for the other 85 W to escape so that body temperature was not elevated. In fact, doing the extra work of climbing the mountain likely raised the the thermal power closer to 300 W so actually something closer to 285 W was being exhausted through the lower body. As a result, body temperature dropped quickly when climbing stopped and the thermal power fell back to about 100 W. If the down were to get wet, things would change drastically. The down would lose its loft and end up with roughly 0.5 cm thickness. Even worse, the water would fill in the air spaces between the down fibers so the thermal conductivity would essentially be the same as for water, which is . Entering these values into the conduction equation we find: Now that’s a problem. The wet heat loss rate is nearly 190x faster than for the dry down in this situation, so to keep up we would need to eat 188 candy bars every six hours, or 31 candy bars per hour! Our bodies would not be able to digest and convert chemical potential energy to thermal energy fast enough to keep warm in that situation and eventually hypothermia would occur. Later in this unit we will be able to estimate how long it would take for the body temperature to drop to dangerous levels in this situation. Down is clearly a poor insulator when wet, but even after drying the fibers do not naturally recover their original loft. Down is a poor choice of insulation in wet environments, though it does well in snow storms as long as the air temperature is cool enough that the snow doesn’t melt when it lands on the jacket. Everyday Examples: Cotton Kills Just as with down, water can permeate the spaces between other fabrics like wool, synthetics, and cotton. The majority of water can be wrung out of wool and synthetics, partially restoring their insulating properties and helping them to dry out quickly and recover full insulation value. In the other hand, water fills space between cotton fibers and also saturates the fibers themselves. As a result cotton does not wring out well and dries slowly, so its thermal conductivity remains much closer to that of water than wool or synthetic. Cotton is a poor choice of insulation in wet environments.

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