Air Conditioning Makes Us Miserable: The Open Window Effect

Send us Fan Mail Why are so many offices freezing in July? We can now engineer any indoor temperature, yet millions of us shiver at our desks. This episode unpacks the physics of air conditioning, a "thermal sponge" that moves heat rather than making cold, and the 1998 UC Berkeley study by Richard de Dear and Gail Schiller Brager that changed how we think about comfort. In this episode: How compressors, condensers and expansion valves really workThe "static model" of comfort, and why it treat...