Jonathan Sherwill

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University of Nottingham > Engineering > Departments > Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering > PDM Exhibitions > 2023 > BEng students > Jonathan Sherwill

A user-friendly hand cooling device, allowing gym goers to perform at a high capacity throughout their workout.

I’m an avid gym goer and love exercise, and I have been going for years now. I enjoy keeping up to date on the latest science and methods of training, improving performance and being as healthy as possible whilst doing so. Doing this research into something I love led me to stumble across some fascinating information and products into an area of biology that utilizes cold exposure to improve physical performance. During my own personal research into this topic, I realised the potential that a product that uses this technology could have in the fitness industry.

Jonathan Sherwill, BEng Product Design and Manufacture

Palm Power

This product is aimed towards people who go to the gym and want to perform at their highest potential. The product is a hand cooling device which a person will hold in their palms between their sets, and this will help them perform at a higher capacity throughout their workout. There are individual products on the market that do this, however they are clunky, expensive, and not the most user friendly. My design is a two-part product that can be used by multiple people at the same time, there is the cooling devices which are contained, cooled, and cleaned by the hub. The product will be bought by the gym owners as a piece of equipment that will be used and returned by the gym members.

The area of science backing this up is relatively new and unknown, however there is a lot of promising evidence proving the benefits of cooling one’s palms between exercise to improve physical performance.

The interaction with the product is very simple. When the user enters the gym, they collect the palm cooling device from the hub at the collecting flap. They then plug it into the hole on top of the hub, which fills the cooling device with cold water. The cooling device is then ready to use for the session, and if the user feels it is getting too warm, they plug it in again to cool the device again. The user holds the cooling device in their hand(s) for 1-1:30 minutes between their exercise which will help them do more reps. At the end of the session the user puts it back into the hub through the drop off flap, where it is cleaned using the UV light which kills bacteria on the surface.

The cooling device explained as simply as possible, is cold water that is encased by a thin cylinder of aluminium that is held together with plastics caps at each end. The cold water absorbs the heat from the users palms which cools their core temperature down and stops the user from overheating. Cold water is efficient at this due to its high specific heat capacity, combined with aluminium’s high conductivity of heat makes it an effective method of cooling one’s palms.