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Body cooling after death
Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine
|September 1, 1980
Abstract:
In the analyses of cases of death in cold air environments, it is often of interest to determine the time required for the body of the individual to cool to ambient temperature. Usually such determinations have been based on Newton's law of cooling. This paper describes a case history in which this technique was experimentally tested and consequently abandoned in favour of a more complex biophysical model which more accurately described the thermo-physical events inherent in body cooling. This model is recommended for determination of the times required for various body parts to cool to ambient environmental temperatures.