# At what temperature will your eyeballs freeze? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 12, 2010, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-temperature-will-your-eyeballs-freeze/524645 "2010-01-12T10:29:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 36
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-temperature-will-your-eyeballs-freeze/524645/36 "2011-01-24T14:58:14Z")
> [@cjepson](#): > > I hope y’all will pardon the hijack, but this reminded me of something I read in a book on Antarctica. At some extremely low temperature (around -60 F, perhaps?), just breathing the air will cause you to eventually die of hypothermia, no matter how warmly you’re dressed. I just did the math. Short answer? Not true. Longer answer: Assume absolutely dry air is inhaled at ambient temp, and that air is then exhaled at body temperature (37C) and 100% relative humidity. Heat is lost from the body due to the warming and humidification of that air. Assume typical parameters for an adult male at rest: 16 breaths per minute, 1/2-liter tidal volume. Assume ambient temp of -60C. I calculated heat loss via respiration to be 29 watts. For reference, heat loss (via respiration) when ambient temp is 0C is 19.2 watts, so the heat loss at -60 is only an additional ten watts on top of that. (humidification requires an impressive 13.2 watts, no matter the ambient temperature; this is why the total power requirement doesn’t drop that rapidly with increasing ambient temp.) Various web references indicate that a normal human bean at rest produces 60-90 watts of heat. If your body is perfectly insulated, you’ll eventually overheat since you’ll only be dumping 29 watts through respiration. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-temperature-will-your-eyeballs-freeze/524645)._