In my limited experience in Arabia, the women wear black, optimized for losing heat inside, and men wear white, optimized for reflecting direct light outside - at least that was my instinctive explanation.
schiffern · 1d ago
>black, optimized for losing heat inside
Black colored clothing does not lose heat faster inside.
You're probably thinking this because of "black body radiation"[0], but room-temperature objects glow in the far IR, not in visible light. So what actually matters for radiant heat loss is to be 'black' in the far IR part of the spectrum, which is true for most non-metals.
Additionally, I doubt that radiative heat loss is a major cooling mode in clothing, vs convection and evaporation. I expect wearing black was more about protection from UV skin damage.
Leading off a scientific paper with a mythological quote doesn't instill confidence. "Survival in hot deserts has always posed a problem for man; Moses had to solve it in order to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness of the Sinai"
"The majority of scholars see the biblical Moses as a legendary figure, while retaining the possibility that Moses or a Moses-like figure existed in the 13th century BCE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses
mathgeek · 1d ago
Some relevant context here is that this paper was published in 1980 by the Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. I would expect such references to be pretty common in such works.
matt-attack · 4h ago
Yeah, I don’t think I follow, just because the university is in Tel Aviv means they have to conflict mythology with science? Seems very condescending.
ghssds · 22h ago
Religious bs comming from an university make it worse. Can't you see it?
ghssds · 22h ago
I stopped reading at "Moses had to solve it in order to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness of the Sinai". I was here for reading scientific litterature, not religious mumbo jumbo.
You're probably thinking this because of "black body radiation"[0], but room-temperature objects glow in the far IR, not in visible light. So what actually matters for radiant heat loss is to be 'black' in the far IR part of the spectrum, which is true for most non-metals.
Additionally, I doubt that radiative heat loss is a major cooling mode in clothing, vs convection and evaporation. I expect wearing black was more about protection from UV skin damage.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body_radiation
"The majority of scholars see the biblical Moses as a legendary figure, while retaining the possibility that Moses or a Moses-like figure existed in the 13th century BCE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses