jaykrownThese outdoor heaters are stupid and a waste of electricity
Those particular ones might be a waste of energy, but outdoor heaters like that in general are great for in front of hotels, and in the vestibule for doormen at clubs or valets
I responded further down but the infrared equivalent to these are very useful and explicitly solve for the energy waste issue you describe. Infrared heaters can’t heat open air which means heat-energy is transferred right to solid surfaces. It is extremely efficient in areas with any amount of airflow as the heat isn’t able to be blown away as it’s radiating from the surfaces below the heater, not the heater or the air between.
I bet we can take it even further. Switch it out for a phased array of infrared emitters that track and target people based on body temperature. Then it won’t have to be on all the time and there’s no way it could possibly go wrong.
Nah we can go way further, what we need is to switch from infrared to microwaves. By emitting microwaves at the right frequency, we can directly transfer energy in a super efficient way. We could tune it to make water molecules vibrate and turn that energy directly into heat. Since humans are basically bags of water, they’d be pretty warm without much energy required at all.
That might work. You could use masers, but I think, in the interest of costs, a cavity magnetron and waveguide would be a better choice for generating the microwaves. You’d have to build a large metal cage around the area with the gaps being smaller than the wavelength to make sure you weren’t heating anything unintended or causing electrical interference to nearby devices/circuits.
There’ll be the problem of the resultant interference pattern in the–what should we call this?–microwave sauna, creating cold and hot spots. You could set it up so the magnetron and waveguide move around, but that’s a failure point centered on the most expensive components. It would probably be wiser to put a rotating platform in the sauna to move the subjects through the bands of positive and negative interference for more even heating.
You’ll probably need to have controls for power level and time. Can’t have the thing on full blast constantly or people will get a little too warm. Those controls will have to be on the outside, so they don’t receive interference from the microwaves. Also, it’ll be really important to educate people not to bring metal with sharp edges into the sauna, otherwise the potential difference between the magnetron and the point/edge of the metal can overcome the electrical resistance of air, creating a plasma arc that could short the whole thing and electrify whatever the metal is connected to. It needn’t be a long list of banned items, just simple things like cell phones, bank cards with chips, zippers, keys, jewelry, dog tags etc.
One of the coolest things about this solution is based on the fact that corn kernels have the moisture to absorb enough energy from the microwaves to make steam and cook internally until they rupture, forming a tasty snack. You could totally put a button on the control panel for making popcorn.
Ra’s al Ghul would like a word with you
Being around microwaves like that has been proven to melt chocolate bars in pockets, though.