• Question: how would you test: the hottest condition a human can survive in?

    Asked by jess10amy to Liam, Emma, Damian, Alan on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Alan Richardson

      Alan Richardson answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      We can measure individuals responses to certain temperatures and then extrapolate (estimate) to responses to hotter temperatures. It would be unethical to knowing harm someone just to find out the heat they can survive. Although we can make them feel quite bad by putting them into temperatures of up to 50C in our chamber, or more if we look at fire service personnel.

    • Photo: Emma Ross

      Emma Ross answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      In our laboratory we have an ‘environmental chamber’ which is a room where we can put the temperature up really high, and see how people respond. We can measure things like their core body temperature, skin temperature, how much they sweat, their blood flow around the body, and how much energy they use. Because it is important not to harm anyone who takes part in our experiments, we keep a close eye on their temperature, and if they get too hot (above 39.5 degrees), we take them out of the chamber to cool down.

    • Photo: Liam Bagley

      Liam Bagley answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      We do really similar stuff to Alan and Emma in our environmental chamber. I enrolled in a study where my friend who was running the study made me do a VO2MAX test in a heat chamber. This is a really hard exercise test until you’re literally exhausted. They took sweat samples from me and took my body temperature as well as blood samples. By the end of it I was an utter mess!
      I train a lot but the heat completely knocked me for six, it shows that these conditions have big effects on how we perform in extreme conditions. For me, that means really badly!

Comments