Good Thinking

Aircon Watch promises to keep you cool around the clock

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Can you control your whole body's temperature by heating or cooling just one small part of it?
The Aircon Watch runs on a 400-mAh battery
Can you control your whole body's temperature by heating or cooling just one small part of it?
Early pledges of $80 are still available through the Aircon Watch's Kickstarter campaign
The Aircon Watch itself features an OLED display
The Aircon Watch works on premise that indeed you can heat or cool a patch of skin to make the whole body feel warmer or colder
A Kickstarter campaign for the Aircon Watch is underway
A Kickstarter campaign for the Aircon Watch is underway
Early pledges of $80 are still available through the Aircon Watch's Kickstarter campaign
The Aircon Watch works on premise that indeed you can heat or cool a patch of skin to make the whole body feel warmer or colder
Can you control your whole body's temperature by heating or cooling just one small part of it?
Early pledges of $80 are still available through the Aircon Watch's Kickstarter campaign
Built into the Aircon Watch's strap is a device that delivers pulses of heat and cold
The Aircon Watch runs on a 400 mAh battery
The Aircon Watch works on premise that indeed you can heat or cool a patch of skin to make the whole body feel warmer or colder
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Can you control your whole body's temperature by heating or cooling just one small part of it? More specifically, the wrist? It seems a little far-fetched, but the makers of the Aircon Watch certainly believe you can, and if their early crowdfunding success is anything to go by, they are far from alone.

The Aircon Watch works on the premise that you can indeed heat or cool a patch of skin to make the whole body feel warmer or colder, and this is not the first time we've come across such an idea. Back in 2013, engineering students at MIT produced a prototype bracelet that could make the entire body feel several degrees warmer or colder by delivering thermal pulses to a copper-alloy heat sink built into the wristband.

For their part, the makers of the Aircon Watch point to a 2012 Stanford University study into temperature regulation in the body. That research led to a device simply called "the glove," which was able to lower the body's temperature by creating a vacuum that draws blood to the surface of the palms, then using cold water to cool the blood before it returns to the heart.

So the science suggests that yes, this kind of thing is possible, but achieving it in laboratory experiments and a polished commercial product are completely different things. Nonetheless, the team behind the Aircon Watch reckon the technology's moment has arrived.

A Kickstarter campaign for the Aircon Watch is underway

Built into the watch strap is a device that delivers pulses of heat and cold, which the makers claim interferes with the signal that the nervous system sends to the part of the brain responsible for regulating our temperature. Confusing the nervous system in this way apparently allows the Aircon Watch to make small changes to body temperature as the user desires.

The watch itself features a OLED display and runs on a 400-mAh battery, said to provide four hours of cooling mode and eight hours of heating.

A Kickstarter campaign for the Aircon Watch is underway, with almost 1,000 backers already pledging more than US$80,000. If you too are convinced of its legitimacy, early pledges of $80 are still available, which will have one headed your way in December if the campaign runs as planned.

You can check out the pitch video below.

Source: Aircon Watch

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5 comments
Bob Stuart
According to my calculator, and assuming a lithium battery, that gives the cooling power of an ice cube less than 1/2" each way.
FabianLamaestra
Lots of fluff and no REAL reviews of ACTUAL people wearing the device. Seems like another kickstarter scammer.
Douglas Bennett Rogers
If you are actually overheated, you will need to remove hundreds of watts of heat. This may work to relieve the perception of being overheated.
JweenyPwee
This is saying that the technology essentially fools the nervous system into feeling cooler or warmer. It doesn't actually raise or lower body temperature...which to me as a layman sounds extremely dangerous. There is a reason we feel hot or cold...because we are too hot or too cold. Billions of years of evolution has developed this method of self-preservation.
The article mentions the research that found sucking blood to the surface of the skin makes the person feel warmer. Or course it would, but the reason the blood has left the surface of the skin is to be rerouted to keep vital organs warm.
Again, dangerous, not to mention a scam.
JeffK
While this concept would not be useful in a survival situation, it could very well aid in a persons acclimating to a new climate. While vacationing in Maui recently, my wife and I, used to the low humidity Montana climate where we grew up, were very uncomfortable in the high humidity tropical climate even though the ambient temperature was somewhat lower than at home. The humidity was not dangerous as evidenced by the locals who were used to the climate and comfortable in it. Feeling a few degrees cooler would have simply made the trip that much more enjoyable.