someone else will do it for me

I have been doing training in the work environment for well over 25 years. I have taught over 20,000 people on short courses. I hope we can agree there is some experience there.

This is a post about the fact that no one shuts doors! - I am sure the statement needs some more explanation. When teaching in a room I will always wear shorts. This only changes if it is a room I know will not heat up, and the weather is very cold.

Participants generally will sit in the group and complain about the temperature, they do this even when I am sat still in T-shirt and shorts. So there is a huge range in the way people experience temp. However, those who are warm tend not to complain. Occasionally in extreme cases, warm people get to the point of dizzy and nearly passing out prior to mentioning being too hot.

So those who are colder are much more vocal, also sometimes not putting on their jumper or coat - just complaining? It is these people I want to highlight about doors.

There are many rooms where I would like the door left open as having a room full of people for a few hours the oxygen level decreases so much I get headaches, oh yes - another post.

People are very vocal about being cold, YET when it comes to the breaks, the vocal one's are heavily likely to walk out of the room and leave the door wide open! This staggers me as they have been so vocal about being cold.

When people are sat at the end of a break waiting for the last person to return and the door is still open the audience tend to mention about the cold and be negative when the last person wanders through the door but doesn't shut it. However, those same vocal people leave the door open when they are the last person back from a different break.

It staggers me how people can walk from a warm room to a cold room and notice the temperature change. The same person can walk from a cold room to a warm room and notice that. Yet for some reason, this understanding that a temperature difference will mean the warm room will get colder to balance the cold room seems beyond comprehension to most people. I refer back to my teaching small groups of adults experience when I say most people - in my experience.

I can relate it to a lack of understanding the simple laws of thermodynamics which govern the balancing of temperature through heat transfer. This is heat energy exchange from the first law and Entropy in action from the 2nd law - trying to get to thermal equilibrium, no net flow of energy between rooms. Without doors and insulation, this is achieved through the warmer room getting colder. And if the colder room is the outdoors, as in the door to the room is straight outside, then the heat will disipate quicky as it cannot warm up the planet enough to stop the temperature in the room dropping. At least in the UK :-)

;tldr

Turning the heat up and leaving the doors and windows open is stupid.

nice to have an anonymous blog...