Body heat-how?

[H2SO4]

How does our body produce body heat? The only thing i can think of that would make enough heat is like the chemical reactions that are constantly going on in our body's. When i was young i ithought it was the friction of the moving blood, but then relized that fluid would never make that much friction under these circumstances.

[YT2095]

you weren`t actualy Wrong

getting the heart rate up and blood pumping faster will indeed warm you up, but it`s not the only cause, the Mitachondria in each of our cells is responsible for energy exchange, this generates a little heat, through that Chemical reaction(s) you spoke of. now when you consider that we have Trillions of these within us that make us up, each tiny little bit of heat mounts up.

 

hope that wasn`t Too simplified?

[MattC]

When you burn a piece of wood, you are taking the carbon and hydrogen bonds in the wood, combining them with oxygen in the air, and producing water, carbon dioxide, and heat (a gross simplification -there are many other products, but these are the ones of interest to us).

 

When you breath in, you take in air, with oxygen. Your lungs take up some of that oxygen, your blood delivers it to cells, and your cells use that oxygen and the food that you eat (which, like wood, has carbon and hydrogen molecules - another gross simplification, but hey it's 2 am, what do you expect?) in a process similar to the burning of the wood to produce heat, water, and carbon dioxide (which you breath out). The heat is either sent out through the body as heat, or used to turn ADP into ATP - ADP and ATP are the same thing, in a sense, they are just like a battery in a charged and uncharged state. ATP is charged. So you breath in, burn food, use some energy to turn ADP (uncharged energy molecules in your cells) into ATP, and some of the heat is "lost" as heat which just radiates out of your body.

 

Also, as your body uses the energy in ATP, some of the energy is "lost" as heat, instead of work, much the same way a car loses some of it's fuel energy to heat (most of it, actually - most of the fuel your car burns doesn't make it move, but instead is wasted as heat loss, or entropy as it is called).

I hope that was helpful!