What's The Quickest Way To De-Mist A Windscreen?

YouTuber Mark Rober uses science to work out the quickest way to de-mist a windscreen, while bringing a few useful hacks into the equation

Matt Robinson

Updated: 06 Jan 2016

Video via Gizmodo

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

So you turn on your A/C, which is going to cool the air, but you turn up the heater, too.

Eeew sorry dude, i don’t think the A/C is active when you turn on your heater at the same time.
Why should a car cool down air and then heat it up again, i guess it just shuts down whatever you switch on first.

This guys an Engineer, i guess he knows what he is saying but i don’t get it.

Could anybody her explain that to me please?

Most cars actually Turn the A/C on automatically when you turn it to defrost/defog because the A/C will help reduce the moisture in the air and a/c doesn’t just cool the air it also dehumidifies it

A/C can produce warm air too, by cooling it down to a certain point (to get rid of moisture) and then heating it up again… That’s how every A/C works. In winter, turning A/C on just makes sure the air coming in is as dry as possible.

I cracked all the windows and now I don’t have windows. Thank you.

Science BIITCH!

OK so you can use shaving cream as an anti fog for your windshield, but can you use anti fog as shaving cream?

Somebody needs to try this haha.

If you’re brave enough, you can use anything as shaving cream

Thanks man I have this problem all the time!

“Most of the cars controls look like these” - Mine is not in this group :D No front defrost… No cold air… What I’m supposed to do :D

Get rid of it :p

Funny how many people don’t know the difference between “Frost” and “Fog” and use them interchangeably.

Well technically they are the same, just Frost is basically frozen Fog.

that’s all i can say:)
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/517/111/fbd.jpg

The real question is, on a cold morning, how long do you wait (if at all) for the engine to warm up before turning the heater on? Its been suggested that turning on the heater immediately after starting the engine makes it take longer to warm up, thus taking longer to defrost/demist.

In my old POS Toyota Tercel ‘93 if I turn my heater on full blast right away I just smell exhaust fumes. So I leave it off until the temperature gauge is above the first line, which takes about 5-10 minutes depending on how cold it is outside. Then I blast the heater and it usually defogs within a minute. I guess it depends on how your car works or how new it is. If it takes heat from the engine or if it has a third-party heater..? That would be my guess.

I wait until the needle for the water temp is off the peg (the peg being metaphorical in my case with the digital dash and all). Once it does that it generally has plenty of momentum on warming up and can pump out hot air in whatever volume I’m looking for. Turning on heat before this is pretty much just means free a/c on a cold morning. This has worked on numerous cars for me.