Top all-time · #18790
Field Study of the World
Personal blog · fieldstudyoftheworld.comdesignscience
Field Study of the World is a personal blog at fieldstudyoftheworld.com about design and science. Since 2019, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times, most often “The Persian ice house, or how to make ice in the desert (2016)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The linked posts cover physical and engineering topics, such as radiative cooling that can produce ice on warm nights and the Persian ice house. Commenters cite them as background without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Observations of a traveling architect and engineer searching for sustainable development
Most-linked posts?
- The Persian ice house, or how to make ice in the desert (2016)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-03-22
What Hacker News says?
It's basic thermodynamics; if you leave a tray of water outside at night and you protect it from wind (convection) and insulate it from the ground (conduction) and there are no clouds, it will radiate heat away into the much cooler night sky. You may have ice in the morning, even if the ambient air temperature is above freezing. (This is also why cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights in winter--clouds prevent s…
Comment linking /persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/
on “Galactic-Scale Energy (2011)”Submitted The Persian Ice House as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> If you're in a desert, and have 10% humidity, you have to cool down your air by a lot for it to become too saturated and condensation to happen. Deserts tend to have pretty wild temperature swings. They usually cool down at night. So much so that in most cases you can make ice. You can use the sky as a heat sink (effectively radiating heat into space). https://www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/persian-ice-house-how-m...
Comment linking /persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/
on “SmartFarm device to harvest air moisture for self-sustaining urban farming”Submitted The Persian ice house, or how to make ice in the desert (2016) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
