Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Chilly at Work? Office Formula Was Devised for Men






Photo

Molly Mahannah wears a sweatshirt and blanket at work in Omaha, wrapping herself up "like a burrito.”CreditChris Machian for The New York Times


At the office, she bundles up in cardigans or an oversized sweatshirt from her file drawer. Then, she says, “I have a huge blanket at my desk that I’ve got myself wrapped in like a burrito.” Recently, “I was so cold, I was like ‘I’m just going to sit in my car in like 100-degree heat for like five minutes, and bake.’”
Summers are hot in Omaha, where heat indexes can top 100 degrees. But Molly Mahannah is prepared.
Ms. Mahannah, 24, who posted on Twitter that at work she felt like an icy White Walker from “Game of Thrones,” said a female co-worker at her digital marketing agency cloaked herself in sweaters, too. But the men? “They’re in, like, shorts.”

Right. It happens every summer: Offices turn on the air-conditioning, and women freeze into Popsicles.



Finally, scientists (two men, for the record) are urging an end to the Great Arctic Office Conspiracy. Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that most office buildings set temperatures based on a decades-old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes that buildings should “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global warming.

...
Fanger’s thermal comfort equation.
PMV = [0.303e-0.036M + 0.028]{( W) – 3.96E-8ƒcl[(tcl + 273)4 – (tr + 273)4] – ƒclhc(tcl – ta) – 3.05[5.73 – 0.007(M – W) – pa] – 0.42[(M – W) – 58.15] – 0.0173M(5.87 – pa) – 0.0014M(34 – ta)}

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