An Original Schteinn Science Report
Under The Weather -- Not A Fun Place To Be
I recently put out a post discussing the downside of writing a post while 'under the weather'. A handy euphemism for being sicker than the proverbial dog. This short piece went on to discuss the process of writing while under the influence of a rather high fever, which produced some interesting results, to say the least. Link: Writing At A Fever'd Pitch
This whole thing got me pondering what actually causes these rises in body temperature, which only seem to occur when one is 'under the weather'. And by Eureka, or any other living room straightening device for that matter, I think I've come up with a couple of theories concerning this occurrence. I shall proceed to share.
The Human Sinus
Evidently, this area of our heads known as the sinus cavity is rather complex and involved. A huge, convoluted bunch of passageways and tunnels behind the eyes and nose, kind of like a Prairie-Gopher town up in our heads, with all sorts of tunnels and passages and dead ends and such. And most of the time, this sinus is full of air. Just like the home-complex of those burrowing rodents. We use these passages to breath in and out, mostly gases like nitrogen and oxygen, argon, and a few others. And most of the time this all works as to plan. A large, complex breathing cave.
But, get some nasty germs up in this area, and make it sick, and the whole thing goes gunny-bags. It fills with all sorts of stuff, which makes it hard to breath, gives us a sinus headache, and if it gets bad enough, leads to a high fever. Which started me to wonder: "What causes all of this high-fever business"?
What NASA And Others Have To Say About This Whole Thing
Whenever there is a question concerning things in life that need to be answered, I go to the source of all knowledge, the Internet, and look up all manner of things. And there is a whole bunch of stuff being written about out there. And some of it can actually be rather helpful.
Since I had a lot of pressure in my sinuses this past week, and with a temperature hovering about 102.3°F, I thought I would pursue this as a heat and pressure sort of problem. And evidently, this idea is not all that new. Seems other people, as well as NASA themselves, have done some research along this line of reasoning, and have some pretty nifty new theories about these ideas.
Theorum No. 1 -- Boyle's Law and The Gopher Town In Your Head
What I discovered was something called The Ideal Gas Law, or Boyle's Law, which seems VERY appropriate, as my head WAS very hot this past week. Not quite boiling, but really hot. And though I realize 'Boil' is the proper way to spell things at 212° F, I'm pretty sure this is just an Olde English way of writing this Law. After all, this theory first surfaced in the 1800's, and that's how they spelled things back then. So, though creative in their naming, it does appear appropriate to this temperature problem at hand.
This Boyle's Law, discusses, with a whole lot of other science tossed in between, the relationship of gasses under volume, pressure and temperature change. Though some of this stuff was a bit complicated, I did find one formula that seemed to explain things pretty well. It looked like this:
PV=nRT
In this equation:
[Showing my situational modifications]
P= Pressure (In the sinuses.)
V= Volume (In the sinuses.)
n= Amount of Substance (In 'moles'. Figure this relates somehow to the prairie gophers.)
R= Universal Gas Constant ('Universal', so this can be applied to things like the Sinus Sciences.)
T= Temperature (Absolute Body Temperature. I like Science, so exacting.)
I wrote this formula down, read a bit more about it, and have brewed up a theory or two on how this relates to temperature rise when one is sick. Read on.
Conclusions
According to this formula, as the volume (V) of stuff in my head goes up, and because of this increase the pressure (P) in my sinuses goes up with it, the body temperature (T) on the other side of the equation should also go up, since there is an equal sign between them. (Still not sure what the 'n' has to do with all this, so we'll just ignore if for now. It's a small letter anyway.) But...as this equation shows...when the volume and pressure of the sinuses increase, the temperature in our head and bodies should increase as well.
Boyle's (Boil's) Law and A Nifty Little Gif to Explain My Head
I found the following little cartoon gif on the NASA Internet to help explain all this complicated math above:
Scientific Note:
Upon further perusal, I think they made a mistake in the creation of the gif above. According to this little cartoon, as the volume (V) of the stuff in my head goes down, the resulting pressure (P) in my head goes up! And my temperature stays the same!!!! And this is not what happens in real-life. While all of this was going on in my head this past week, my temperature went UP. Significantly! I have a doctor's note to prove it. So, either this little cartoon is wrong, or the PV=nRT math stuff above is all wrong, or both.
(Though I LOVED this little cartoon as an example. This last week, my head definitely felt like someone had piled heavy gold ingots in my sinus cavity and on the top of my head. So I just wanted it to work as an explanation. I guess that just goes to show how Science doesn't always work all that well at explaining things, at least now and then.)
On to other theories:
~Literary Intermission~
Theorum No. 2 -- The Heat Of The Center Of The Earth And My Head Problems
Since this whole Math Problem/NASA thing didn't really work all that well, I've created my own little cartoon, to describe what I think concerning this whole fever-in-the-head thing, and what is happening to us when we get sick.
I've added some explanation arrows to the same diagram below, to help everyone understand what is going on here.
Diagram -- With Explanatory Arrows
Explanation:
The weather is like a giant umbrella, hanging over the earth. It's everywhere, depending on what it is doing at the time. This weather layer acts like a huge down comforter, and tends to trap the heat of the earth above the surface of the earth. And the center of the earth? It is hot. REALLY hot. Like melting rocks and boulders and anything else down there -- hot. Luckily, it's not that hot up here on the surface, above what's called the Earth's Crust, but still, it's hot.
And what happens when we get sick? We tend to lay about in bed. A lack-of-energy-when-sick sort of thing. And while we lay around in the average bed, our head (Arrow A) is a mere 45cm above the floor. And what's below the floor? The earth, and all that heat, coming up from the Mantle and the Inner and Outer Core. Something like 2.32478 gigatherms/meter³ of temperatures, emanating up from all those melting rocks below.
So, when we decide to lay down while we're sick, we get more of this heat through the floor, that is coming up from the innards of the Earth, which makes the temperature in our heads rise somewhat significantly. We get a fever.
When Healthy, And Not In Bed
Compare the above scenario to the vertical person at (Arrow B.) This healthy person has no reason to lie about in bed. They're feeling pretty good, just standing or walking about on the Crust of the Earth, doing their daily chores. And while standing or walking about, their head is, on average, 165cm away from the surface of the earth. A difference of 138 cm distance, when compared to the poor sick person off laying in bed (Arrow A).
And this is significant. Particularly if the wind is blowing. The person at (Arrow B) is not absorbing enough of the heat from the Earth's Mantle and Core to significantly raise the temperature of their head. They exhibit no fever symptoms whatsoever.
This reminds me a bit of the classic chicken and the egg argument. There is no reason to lay around in bed, if feeling well. And if you are not laying around in bed, there is no way to get an increase in temperature, which if you did, then makes you lay around in bed even more. Thus, raising your temperature even MORE. It all makes great sense.
Well, thank you for stopping in and reading from this little corner of the World of Science.
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