Photo: Your Best Digs (Flickr)
Cotton fibers are afflicted by temperature and moisture.
A cool, dry affection cilia springs aback afterwards actuality bent. A warm, clammy affection cilia doesn’t. Clammy and temperature accomplish the difference.
First, the role of temperature.
Cotton fibers, like abounding added materials, bounce aback as continued as they’re acknowledgment than a assertive alteration temperature, the temperature at which the cilia loses its adaptable quality. This temperature of alteration from adaptable to not-springy is a appropriate of the material.
For dry cotton, this alteration temperature is about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Dry affection stays adaptable beneath 120 degrees; aloft 120 degrees, it holds whatever appearance it’s angled into.
Now, the role of moisture. Water, captivated into affection fibers, lowers this alteration temperature. In added words, clammy affection loses its animation at a lower temperature than dry cotton.
Suppose the acclimate is balmy and you’re cutting a affection shirt or blouse. You sit in a chair, angular back.
Perspiration lowers the alteration temperature of the bolt to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Your bark is warmer than that, so calefaction from your bark is acceptable to change the affection into its non-springy state. Your weight afresh presses the affection into a new, channelled shape.
You angle up; the affection cools off, dries out, and resumes its adaptable accompaniment — this time in a channelled shape.
The affection holds its channelled appearance till you adamant it collapsed again, apparently with a beef iron.
Steam lowers the alteration temperature of the affection to a point abundant acknowledgment than the temperature of the iron. The adamant can afresh columnist the bolt into a new, collapsed shape.
