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From: jeff@heurikon.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc,net.physics
Subject: Re: Why don't thermostats work?
Message-ID: <204@heurikon.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Feb-84 01:00:50 EST
Article-I.D.: heurikon.204
Posted: Fri Feb 10 01:00:50 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Feb-84 10:17:16 EST
References: <4312@amd70.UUCP>
Organization: Heurikon Corp., Madison WI
Lines: 19

To Phil, RE: Electric blankets.
The thermostats on electric blankets regulate by sensing the
room temperature, not *your* temperature.  (Wow! what a straight
line that is!)  Anyway, a blanket thermostat has a little heater in
it which adds heat to the thermostat whenever the blanket is adding
heat to your bed.  I guess the theory is that the rate of heat loss
by the bed will be similar to the rate of heat loss by the thermostat.
Mine seems to work pretty well, but I don't know how accurate they are.

What should *really* be regulated is not the bed temperature, but your
*feeling* about what the temperature is.  During the night, as your
metabolism changes, I'm sure most people would sense a different
temperature even if the actual bed temperature didn't change.
Now, somebody could probably revolutionize the electric blanket
thermostat industry by designing some sort of sensor for *that*.
-- 
/"""\	Jeffrey Mattox, Heurikon Corp, Madison, WI
|O.O|	{harpo, hao, philabs}!seismo!uwvax!heurikon!jeff  (news & mail)
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