Froze said:
I disagree with Alfeng! And instead of giving you a bunch of personal experiences having lived in the high desert areas of California where color did matter, here is a web site to prove my points:
8h.6 Black vs White Helmet - Thermal Test
You could be right ...
And, the test may be valid (I don't have the inclination to look at all of the test data because I would like to think that the author of the "test" included the most meaningful numbers in his rambling) ...
BUT, I would have preferred seeing more realistic test parameters!
As you may-or-may-not know, a 60 watt incandescent bulb gets pretty hot. While a 150 watt bulb doesn't come close to producing the millions of degrees Fahrenheit as the Sun, having the lamp FIVE INCHES (!?!) from the measured surface would seem to produce an unrealistic temperature (i.e., I doubt the shell of your helmet ever exceeded 150º even if you were in Death Valley) by/from/
whatever which measurements should be made ... that is, how do 'we' know that the test parameters weren't skewed until 'appropriate' results which fit the hypothesis were achieved?
I don't know what wattage bulb was used in the EASY BAKE OVEN (it can't have been more than 150 watts), but it got hot enough to bake a cupcake -- about 425ºF, I presume.
And, honestly, the only time when I am pedaling and my speed drops to about 6.5 MPH is when I am grinding on some uphill and gassed (which is certainly more often than not!) ... so, the dissipating effect of the 'breeze' created by the fan just doesn't strike me as a realistic situation.
AND, while the test does point to an outcome under
some circumstances, 'I' just don't think that either the test paramters were realistic OR that the the data sampling was necessarily representative of the true difference.
BTW. I would trust YOUR anecdotal experience where you might have worn a Black helmet for a few miles, changed to wearing a White helmet for a few miles, the Black helmet for a few more miles, the White helmet for a few miles, the Black helmet for a few more miles, and then reported your subjective impression
if you had ever run such a test (vs. chronologically unrelated impressions) rather than the data as presented.