Question

Discuss why wearing more layers of clothing during winter keeps us warmer than wearing just one thick piece of clothing?

Answer 1

In order to solve this question we need to understand the definition of heat. Heat is energy that flows due to temperature difference. There are three methods for transfer of heat, first is conduction in which matter itself do not move rather transfer energy using phonons, second is convection in which matter itself transports in order to pass the current like hot air rising in atmosphere and third one is radiation which do not material medium to transfer heat here heat transfer takes place with the use of photons like sun gives us heat in form of photons.

Complete answer:
Heat transfer always took place from a high temperature to low temperature. The high temperature body is known as source and low the low temperature body is known as sink.So during winter season our atmosphere becomes a sink since it no longer receives the sun light in an efficient amount but our body remains the same as source.

So our body temperature is higher in comparison to the atmosphere so as described, heat transfer takes place from our body to the atmosphere eventually all our heat transfers and we feel cold.So to prevent this we need to prevent our heat from losing to the atmosphere so we use clothes which are bad conductors of heat.

So if we use so many clothes then hot air not only can be prevented from flowing into the atmosphere but also we can trap the hotter in between clothes so that we can feel warm and that is the reason why we wear so many clothes in winter rather than a single piece of cloth.

Note: It should be remembered that a bad conductor of heat means the material does not allow the heat energy to pass through it easily while a good conductor of heat is one which allows the heat energy to pass through it easily. Cotton fabric is mostly used as clothing as it’s a bad conductor of heat.