Tag Archives: toiletries

What’s Hot? What’s Not?

Lady Gaga. Edward or Jacob? Celebrity reality shows. Farmville. The iPad. Know what else is hot?
My toiletries.

We have air-conditioning units in our dining room and bedrooms, and that’s it. Today’s temperature is 100°F, so anything not located in the dining room or bedrooms is getting broiled. Sometimes it’s nice to slather warm body butter on my feet before I go to bed, but when I start sweating straight out of the shower, I don’t really want my facial moisturizer to heat up my skin like Ben-Gay.

Just for kicks, I conducted a little experiment on our toiletries, and the results were surprising. I’m sure some brainiacs out there could explain this phenomenon, but I did not expect to see such a range of temperatures. I mean, all of these products live in the same sweltering room. Why didn’t they all have the same temperature?

Here’s the rundown (my thermometer only gives readings in Fahrenheit, so I apologize to those of you in the metric world): Our toothpaste got the hottest with a blazing temp of 97.4°F. Shaving cream stayed the coolest with a relatively chilly temp of 95.7°F.

hot toiletries

hot toiletries 2

Feeling very clever, I took my experiment one step further, using the scientific method:
(1) Ask a Question – Is there a relationship between the tap labeled “cold” and the actual temperature of the water?
(2) Construct a Hypothesis – Turning on the “cold” tap will release cold water out of the faucet.
(3) Test the Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment – I turned on the “cold” tap and used my thermometer to measure the temperature of the water. At first, the water temperature was 90.4°F, which I believe would universally be considered not cold. After letting the water run for a bit to get the hot water out of the pipes, I measured the temperature again: 92.7°F. It actually got hotter.
(4) Draw a Conclusion – It seems there are two potential conclusions. (a) My hypothesis was wrong, and there is no cold water in Laos. (b) My hypothesis was correct, and “cold” in Laos is a relative term defined as being around 92°F.

So you know what’s NOT hot in Vientiane? Nothing.