The specific heat of humans
Pancake is waffle like man is aluminum? Well yes indeed. Pancakes and waffles have a lot in common, and it turns out that metals and humans do too. What is this shared value? Specific heat! Remember high school chemistry class when we set different metal objects on fire and then measured how fast or slow the object would heat up and cool down? This value would vary drastically depending on the metal. As a soda, aluminum foil, just like the one you use in your kitchen, heats up very quickly and cools down very quickly too. Aluminum is very different from iron, which, on the other hand, takes time to increase in temperature and is also slow to cool down.
When it comes to emotions, humans also have their own specific calorific value. Some of us “get hot” (see what I did there?) Quickly and then quickly calm down, but others exhibit remarkable patience to some extent and then get very hot and take a considerable amount of time to cool down. Think of the difference between a Buddhist monk and a two-year-old. With whom would you prefer to discuss or confront a problem or concern? The specific heat of humans is basically a fancy way of saying temperament, except maybe we can measure, quantify and compare the variation from one person to another in a logical way. There is no specific calorific value right or wrong, good or bad. Instead, each has its own place and purpose for different things. For example, aluminum is a terrible conductor of heat, but the molecular structure of aluminum allows the element to have rapid changes in temperature compared to any other metal, making it ideal for cooking as it is less likely to heat up! burn me! The griddle, on the other hand, holds the heat for longer so it wouldn’t be ideal in the kitchen, but if you’re camping and want your food to stay hot longer in the pot then that’s great!
What if we could calculate what each of our specific calorific values is and then use that as a reference to compare with other people? Imagine that in your dating profile next to your astrological sign and your age, you also included your human specific heat value to indicate how much of a temperament you have. Some people like to be around others who get upset quickly but also reconcile quickly, especially if that’s how they are too! Others, on the other hand, may look for partners who are slow to get angry and also slow to decompress after an argument, if that’s the way they are. For example, I am a short-tempered redhead and my husband is a quiet North African. Naturally, when we argue and I’m fine five minutes later ready to move on, kiss and make up, I hope he follows him in this regard too, but he doesn’t do it at all. We have very different specific qualifiers! Had we known each other’s ‘number’, when we met, it would inform and shape how we react to each other and our different temperament needs. This knowledge could help us to ease the burns of others instead of adding fuel to the fire inadvertently.
For metals, the formula for calculating specific heat capacity is as follows: c (specific heat capacity) = E (total energy) / m (mass) x † T (change in temperature). As we discussed earlier, aluminum is very hot for jogging with a specific heat capacity of 9, which is high compared to iron, which is around 45, and gold, which is a mere 1. If we adapt this formula to humans, it would look like this: h (human specific heat capacity) = E (total energy or calories burned) / m (mass) xˆ † T (change in time elapsed over the course of the discussion). If I look at the example from this morning, indicative of most cases, my specific heat value when I plugged into this would be .02 and my husband’s would be .01. It turns out that, as a pancake is for waffle, I am for aluminum as he is for ironing.
Who remembers the Hot or Not website when we were teenagers? Well, this is the modern ‘Hot or Not’ experiment, but more deliberative than assigning a number from 0 to 10 to someone’s photo online.
So what is your number?