Researchers have now developed Wristify, a hi-tech bracelet that can cool or heat one’s entire body and it’s so effective that it could replace air con units.
For most of the countries in the Northern hemisphere of the globe, the temperature is currently decreasing like the altitude of a stick of butter on a ski slope, snow is becoming more of a sure thing than even more versions of iPhones and the population is wrapping up in more blankets and jackets than you can shake a woolly fleece at. Needless to say that two of the biggest concerns during Winter are the dropping temperature and just how people will be able to pay for heating with energy prices being on the rise. However, one team of researchers may have found the solution with ‘Wristify’ a temperature controlling bracelet that could replace in-house heating altogether.
What Wristify does is that being a thermoelectric bracelet it can increase the wearer’s temperature to something a little more optimal for the chilly weather. Created by a team of students at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wristify is a copper-alloy based heat sink which monitors the user’s temperature automatically, making adjustments accordingly. Research suggests that an increase or decrease of just 0.1C in temperature a second can make the body feel greatly warmer or cooler respectively and Wristify is capable of 0.4C of temperature change per second, making it incredibly useful.
Wristify isn’t just used as a better way of warding off the icicles on the edge of your nose either, it has great uses in the Summer months too, as it can also cool down the body. And it’s efficiency doesn’t stop there either. With the team at MIT saying that it takes around 100kWh to increase the temperature of a large building by 1C (in other words, quite a bit of power for not a lot of heat), not only does Wristify improve upon this by making heating or cooling individual (and therefore only necessary for those who actually want it, and not alienating those who feel just right) its lithium polymer battery also means that it works for 8 hours. For now, Wristify is still a prototype but as the team behind the device were recently awarded $10,000 by the MIT Making and Designing Materials Engineering Competition, money which the team say they’ll be investing in Wristify, the availability of this useful gadget to the wider market doesn’t seem to be long off.
We’ll keep you posted once we know more.
Source: MIT
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