How An Igloo Keeps You Warm

Humans, plants, and animals have been using snow to keep themselves warm in icy cold areas. Igloo is a type of hut that is built of snow, when the snow is suitable, to keep humans warm. How does Igloo, something made out of the snow which is naturally really cool, keep us warm?

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Why we feel cold?

Cold can’t move into our body when we are in a colder region. Our body’s temperature starts to drop, this happens because heat leaves our body. The more the heat leaves, the colder you feel.

How Igloos are built?

Igloos are built from compressed snow and shaped like a dome, usually made from blocks of snow cut out of the ground that is dense enough to hold up during rough weather. Individual blocks are stacked up in a spiral, going round and round which gets inward at each spiral until the curved roof is complete. This curved structure is exceptionally strong.

Why snow is used instead of solid ice to build igloos?

Unlike solid ice, the snow has better insulating properties because it has miniature air pockets. 95% of snow is snow trapped inside tiny crystals. Since the air can’t circulate well inside the ice crystals, the heat gets trapped.

How do igloos work as an insulator?

When the body radiates heat inside an igloo it moves around the igloo by convection and gets lost through the walls by conduction. Our body heat melts the inner layer of the igloo and strengthens the barrier between you and the freezing weather outside. Thus, working as an insulator and trapping the heat.
Animals figured this out long and make snow burrows to stay warm and plants tuck into the snow to avoid freezing to death.