Little Miracles 33 



ance and convenience. The movie industry, for instance, has 

 developed small rooms for screening pictures which sound 

 exactly like big theatres. Is there any reason why the room 

 in which we listen to the radio should not be made to sound 

 like a concert hall when we listen to 'big' music? Modern 

 rooms, with their bare walls and sparse furniture, often sound 

 hollow like an empty apartment and frequently present 

 other annoying acoustical problems. Most of these faults can 

 be obviated by nonparallel walls, sloping ceiling or curved 

 surfaces if the designer is sufficiently well acquainted with 

 acoustical correction." 



Radiant Heating 



Engineers tell us that radiant heating will chase the radiators 

 or hot-air vents out of the home of the future. Radiant heat- 

 ing warms the walls, or floor and ceiling, by means of con- 

 cealed hot-air or hot-water pipes. The temperature in a 

 radiant-heated room might be 65 degrees or less, but you 

 could sit around in your shirt sleeves and feel comfortable. 

 Sounds like "black magic." But it isn't. 



Physics teachers tell us of a law which says that a warm 

 body always loses heat to a cold one. Your body produces 

 more heat than it needs, and you must get rid of this extra heat 

 to be comfortable. You feel uncomfortably warm when the 

 body has difficulty getting rid of its excess heat, and cold 

 when it loses heat too fast. If the walls of a room are cold you 

 lose heat to them and feel chilly even though the air in the 

 room may be hot. But if the walls around you are heated by 

 steam pipes to 80 or 90 degrees you lose very little heat to 

 them and feel comfortably warm even though cold air may 

 be swirling around you. 



On the other hand, a radiator in a room heats the air in one 

 spot and depends on the circulation to warm the whole room. 



