A Fan For Life (of a fan)
For some reason, I thought that fanning yourself with something, like a wedding program or a folder, actually made you warmer. But, as I Googled around looking for a good quote to kick off a hilarious write-up about these little touch activated fans, I found this:
[Dr. E. Phinney] says when you fan yourself, cooler, drier air molecules collide with your skin, and whisk away some of your body heat and sweat in the process. Dr. Phinney says the key is to keep the air moving, because the faster it moves, the more it conducts heat and moisture away from your body.
That explanation sort of makes some sense to me. What makes less sense is why it’s on John Tesh’s website. Did I miss a crucial plot twist in the career of Johnny Keys? Did he pivot from writing the old NBA on NBC song to being a wellness blogger? And did anyone actually ever call him Johnny Keys?
I can answer just one of those questions, the last one: yes… I did… just now (see above).
At any rate, this explanation pretty much killed my write-up idea. It was going to glorious. I would lay out how inefficient fanning oneself is, thus making these dinky little electric fans (which are not super efficient themselves) seem like world-beaters by contrast. But I was bested, by a man with lush hair and an ear for cranking out Emmy-winning sports themes.
Luckily, the Tesh “article” threw me a lifeline at the end:
Dr. Phinney says the act of waving does make you about 1% warmer than when you’re completely at rest, but that’s not enough to offset the fact that waving a fan doubles the air speed around you. In other words: In exchange for that 1% of extra energy, you’re cooling off twice as fast.
Ah, so fanning will make you 1% warmer. That’s negligible… but not as negligible as it would be with these negligibly priced touch-activated fans! EAT THAT, TESH!
