INSIDE GORE’S ENVIRONMENTAL TESTING CHAMBER, THE AMBIENT AIR temperature is a balmy 35°C. Huge lights on the seven-metre-high domed ceiling beat down. Near one of the treadmills, a tester named Walter is running in place. He’s an integral part of the research team, who’s there every day, helping scientists test new outdoor apparel. He’s got sensors on his body measuring sweat rate, skin temperature, and range of motion. There are also hoses coming out of his eye sockets.
Walter, as you may have guessed, is not actually a human. He’s a $400 000 (±R6.6 million) mannequin, to be exact, with more than 100 sweating pores on his fibreglass and carbon-fibre body. And he’s just one of the high-tech tools in the fabric and manufacturing company’s $5 million biophysics lab at it’s Elkton, Maryland, R&D facility.
Next to Walter, a college student from nearby University of Delaware jogs on an inclined treadmill, wearing sunglasses and a lightweight wind shell. He’s strapped with a heart-rate monitor and has swallowed a thermometer the size of two Advil gel capsules that’s measuring his core temperature and sending real-time readings to the lab’s computers through a radio signal. Gore’s lab technicians will use this and other data to develop some of the most technologically advanced outdoor apparel on the market.
This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Popular Mechanics South Africa.
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This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Popular Mechanics South Africa.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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