Hi all. Just a reminder that the Vets shirts will be ordered on Wednesday. If you don’t have your size beside your name on the sheet above the Club noticeboard by the close of the vets presentation tomorrow I will assume that you don’t want a shirt.

Colour

Just to answer those who think that the shirt colour chosen is too hot, below are the actual facts from a physics perspective (taken from the ABC website).

“Generally in summer, we’re treated to lines of loose summery white clothing. Not only is the white supposed to look nice floating around the edges of a picnic — until a few seconds into the event, when it has its first grass stain — people claim that white is the ideal way to keep cool in the summer. When we see white, we’re seeing the combination of all possible visible light. This means that white clothing reflects a great deal of wavelengths of energy coming in. This means it should reflect the sun’s rays back, instead of letting them cook us. And that’s perfectly correct.

Except that this explanation is incomplete. Heat is not just coming in off of the sun. It’s also coming off a person’s own, sweating, warm-blooded, mammalian body, which is a lot closer than the sun is. When all that body heat hits the white clothing covering it, it gets reflected right back towards the body. When we wear white, we cook ourselves.

The best colour to keep cool in the heat, it turns out, is to wear black. Black absorbs everything coming in from the sun, sure. But black also absorbs energy from the body instead of reflecting it back. Now, the helpfulness of black clothes depends on finding black clothes that are the same thickness and looseness as those summery white clothes. Black clothing also needs a little help from atmospheric conditions. Once it has absorbed heat, it has to have some way to radiate it away. If there’s even a little wind, black clothing is the better choice for those who want to keep cool, so find something black to wear this summer.

Another reason black is safer for you in the summer months is because of its high ultraviolet protection factor.  The darker a colour, the more protection from the sun you’ll have, whereas the lighter the colour, the less protection you’ll have from the sun.  This could mean the difference between skin cancer and staying safe.”