Winter’s there! Time to take out your jackets, gloves and scarves. But that doesn’t mean the fun’s all over, and you need to stay inside and wait for spring to come round again! Quite the reverse: chemistry offers solutions to help us enjoy and live through this season in a more comfortable way!
In fact, there’s much more chemistry to winter that you think!
Clothing: Warm, dry & reflective
A range of different innovative materials allow us to wear more comfortable and safer clothes to face the harsh winter weather conditions.
To keep our clothes warm and dry, industry mainly uses polyester and specific knitting techniques.
Retro-reflective clothing can either contain reams of tiny, partly mirrored glass particles, so called Luneburg lenses, or micro trifold prisms located on a polymer film that reflect impinging light in the direction of the source of light.
Heating: Make it warm, make it right!
Winter that also means that we need to turn on the heating! Unfortunately, in many buildings, too much energy is wasted in order to achieve thermal comfort. Energy efficiency, however, is not just another buzzword. It is a reality.
This season, don´t forget to prepare your home with the right insulation materials that will save both energy and money!
New materials can not only increase energy efficiency, but also absorb and transform energy. A modern home can now reduce its energy consumption by 90%.
Snowflakes: Let it snow, let it snow
Winter’s also the time for snowball fights! What the majority of us don´t know is that snowflakes are all about chemistry!
Snowflakes form in clouds, which consist of water vapour. They originate from bits of dust in clouds that become droplets of water falling to Earth. When the temperature is 0° C or colder, water changes from its liquid form into ice – six crystal faces form because water molecules bond in hexagonal networks when they freeze.
As each snowflake rises and falls through warmer and cooler air, it thus develops its own distinctive shape.
In the video below you can better understand the whole process:
Would you like to add some more chemistry solutions for this winter!?
