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Re: Sunburn from sitting in car



At 20:44 2/15/98 -0600, you wrote:
An engineer friend of mine says his wife got sunburn from driving on a hot
summer day with all the windows closed and the air-conditioning running.
He asked me for a physics explanation but I was unable to give him one.

Could anyone comment on this?

Pang-Chieh Chou
http://www.hal-pc.org/~pchou

I can propose a somewhat plausible story:
people can cook their skins in a hot environment
a la lobster thermidor.
The discomfort level would tend to invoke a self-limiting
effect as the victim overheats and escapes - but a continuous
cool-draft might make the skin-injury less obvious and permit
continued cooking...
(The only part of this tale which is contentious is that
one might recall certain rays in the UV range are supposed to
be particularly 'sun-burning', and that auto glass is said to
absorb these frequencies.)
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK