Office keep the heat too high in the winter? Wristify is a bracelet that cools you down

Christina Drill
October 10, 2014

It's about time someone came up with a way to shield people from the annoying subjectivity of temperature!

Four MIT engineering students came up with the idea to create a bracelet that monitors your temperature and the temperature of the air around you and sends hot or cold pulses through your wrist to keep your personal body temperature at a level at which you are comfortable.

The thermoelectric bracelet is designed to give you the same relief as putting a cold towel on your head or dipping your toes into the water on a hot day. After many worse-looking prototypes that involved old Rolex wristbands and a clunky looking thermo-electric bed, the bracelet is fashioned to look like a designer jewelry piece, with a sleek silver band that fits snugly around your wrist.

The team behind Wristify, who were awarded a $10,000 cash prize after being announced the First Place winners at the MADMEC, MIT’s annual materials-science design competition run by MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). The team's goal, aside from changing the comfort game, is to reduce the energy consumption of whole buildings, and instead focus on heating or cooling the people, not the entire building.

Sam Shames, the co-inventor of Wristify and a materials science and engineering senior at MIT, told MIT News: “Buildings right now use an incredible amount of energy just in space heating and cooling. In fact, all together this makes up 16.5 percent of all U.S. primary energy consumption. We wanted to reduce that number, while maintaining individual thermal comfort."

Wristify technology could single handedly put a stop in the world's energy crisis. The tech team's guess is that if it can keep one building from adjusting its temperature by even just 1 degree Celsius, it will save the world nearly 100 kilowatt-hours per month. SIGN. US. UP!