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I went to the beach and parked my car in the sun. I entered the car after two hours and it was terribly hot inside. No matter how expensive and modern is the car, there is still no easy and efficient method of how to keep your car cool while exposed to the sunlight. There are active methods of opening the windows, putting the shades and reflecting materials on the windshields, or turning the AC before you plan to go, but they require the engine or the system running, are not so efficient, plus opening the windows can help your car being hijacked.
My idea is to use nanocoating that would prevent the heating of the car. Scientists already developed nanocoatings that would help to reduce the heating of the asphalt , but I would like to use something like vanadium dioxide, whose optical transmission changes with temperature were described in 2017 . While cool, vanadium dioxide is transparent to the IC. As soon as the temperature rises, it reflects IR, which drastically slows down the further heating of the underlying material.
The nanocoating should be in the form of liquid, easily applicable, non-toxic and transparent for the visible light at all temperatures.
Using the same technology to develop cooling clothes
Povilas SJul 19, 2021
If proven to be effective with cars, the next step could be to use similar nanocoatings on textiles to develop clothes that keep you cool in summer in direct sunlight. Since nanoparticles are extremely tiny, perhaps it would be possible to spray thin cotton clothing with them and such a fabric would still be breathable. Or even better - the threads from which the fabric is made could be evenly and entirely covered in such coating, when woven into fabric they would naturally form gaps allowing air and humidity to pass, just as ordinary threads. As a result, some sunlight would pass through the gaps, but the heat would be greatly reduced anyway. However, in the latter scenario the coating would also reflect back the IR emitted by the body, so it might not be the best approach.
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Samuel Bello3 years ago
Cars get hot when parked under the sun because their metallic parts get heated up easily by the sun's radiation because metals are good conductors of heat and they have lower specific heat capacities than insulators (this means that insulators require more energy to get heated up than good conductors of the same mass). The nano-coating that was suggested is supposed to prevent the metallic parts of the car from getting heated by shielding them from sunlight. It might not make much of a difference if you spray it on clothes since the textiles already insulate most of the heat.
Adding metallic parts on the inside of the clothes can make them feel more comfortable since they conduct the heat away from our bodies. This is why metal buttons on the inside of our clothes sometimes feel cooler than the temperature of our surroundings.
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Lotions can be made out of this Type of Nanoparticles to Reduce the Effect of Direct Sunlight on the Skin
Samuel BelloJul 28, 2021
A lotion that is produced with such nanoparticles can be used to protect one's skin from too much exposure to sunlight. This will help to prevent sunburns and reduce the heat felt by parts of one's skin that are exposed to sunlight.
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General comments
Povilas S3 years ago
Even if the coating is not transparent to visible light it could still greatly reduce the temperature of a car's interior. It just has to do more than reflect the visible light like white paint does. The windows could be covered from the inside with sun reflecting foil and the roof and sides of the car sprayed with such nanocoating.
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