Krakow is windy and raining. The Polaci are prepared with sturdy functional umbrellas. What little water evades their cover is sloughed away by the aerodynamic lift streamlined around their sloping noses. At only around 1/2 Rzeczpospolitan Jew, I got soaked on the way to and from Szpital Miejski Specjalistyczny, where Daniel is draining fluid from the spot where his appendix used to be.
an appendix wrapped around a laparoscope
Water evaporating from the street cools the air. It has become cold. I can’t sleep.
The tiny dry sauna in our apartment building has a mini electric coil producing adequate heat with poor ventilation. Dim LED lights in the ceiling change color slowly in the arched blue ceilinged steam room. The wooden bench in the sauna and the tiles in the steam room have very different feels. The dry air of the sauna feels cooler than the wet air of the steam room, but the thermometers tell the opposite story.
The wood is warm, and slowly heats up. The tile is hot, but quickly cools down. If the thermometer says 98 degrees centigrade, is the wood cooler and the tile hotter? When you throw water on the rocks, it burns your face, but the thermometer stays stubbornly in place. What the hell is going on in the banya?
Are there special laws of thermodynamics for Russian baths?
The first law of banya thermodynamics
The first law of banya thermodynamics states:
Throwing water on the rocks creates 100 degree Celsius steam.
This is not to say that steam cannot get hotter, only that it begins its life steaming hot off the rocks at the same temperature as boiling water.
The second law of banya thermodynamics
The second law of banya thermodynamics states:
The banya bench is as hot as the banya air.
It may feel cooler if its wood, or hotter if it’s tile. But no, it is the same temperature. It has been sitting there long enough to equilibriate to the same temperature as the air. However, some materials conduct heat more rapidly than others, so they may feel different temperatures to the touch depending on how quickly they transfer heat to your skin. The quicker a substance transfers heat to your skin, the hotter it feels, and vice versa.
If you can handle the heat and lie on the wooden sauna bench for long enough, your body, which actively works to keep you at a lower temperature than the scorching sauna air (otherwise you would die), will cool down the wood on the bench and the pocket of air immediately around you. How quickly you are able to cool down the wood or air depends on those substances’ heat retention factors. In other words, different substances require different amounts of energy changes in order to change temperature.
The third law of banya thermodynamics
The third law of banya thermodynamics states:
Steam heats up your skin when it hits you
Remember, liquid water is a lesser energy state than steam. Your body is cooler than the air in a Russian bath (otherwise you would die). So when steam hits your skin, it turns into water. When a gas turns into a liquid, which requires a lesser energy state, it releases the extra energy onto your face. That excess energy is felt as an increase of temperature of your skin. It can be painful to be hit by a wave of steam.
The fourth law of banya thermodynamics
The fourth law of banya thermodynamics states:
Banya air is less dense than restaurant air
When water is thrown on the rocks, the H2O molecules in the ensuing steam wedge themselves in between the usual oxygen and nitrogen molecutes normally in the air. Basically the steam takes up space that would normally be taken up by regular air. So less oxygen and nitrogen fit in the sauna’a air. So it’s important to air out the rooms once in a while to get more oxygen in there.