Walls can cool themselves!

I always start my column with a question. So why break away with tradition now?

Would you believe that walls can cool themselves when they get hot? (Actually that’s 2 questions at the beginning of this column!) Many of you, if not all of you will answer a simple and flat, ‘NO’. I would have said so too until I read it with my own eyes (I didn’t actually see these walls with my own eyes, no).

The BASF company announced in mid-year that it had managed to do the impossible. The experiments were held in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

Ok, I know you are all interested in reading how these walls in fact ‘work’ but it’s sort of complicated. Anyway I’ll try my best. Read on!

The walls are filled with plastic micro-marbles, which in turn are filled with paraffin wax. Now the wax will melt at a temperature higher than 24oC something. Melting, as you might know absorbs energy, which is in this case heat. The paraffin wax in the micro-marbles absorbs heat thus cooling their surroundings (they take all the heat away).

Of course, there’ll be millions, even billions of micro-marbles full of paraffin in only 1 wall. The walls will seem to absorb heat from their surroundings. A short nap next to one of those during a hot summer day would be great; no need to sit under trees anymore!!!

With this small invention-of-a-genius, we will be able to play computer games without sweating or even go to the toilet and not sweat there!

BASF for its part is not settling down there though. This is an invention for this summer but what will we see next. What will we see next winter? Mystery!