Hats off to Kaspar Jansen, Linda Plaude, and Lennart Teunissen

The Olympic Games in Tokyo were predicted to be one of the hottest on record. Luckily the Dutch team had ‘coolcaps’ to help them beat the heat.

The hat, while it may look simple, has a lot going on underneath its hood. What makes these caps so cool? Designed by IDE’s Professor Kaspar Jansen, together with lecturer Linda Plaude, and researcher Lennart Teunissen, the caps have an outer layer that reflects a large portion of the solar radiation spectrum. They also has an inner layer with six cooling packs. The cooling packs consist of a hydrated salt. When stored in a fridge, the salts remain solid… But when the hat is used, the salt absorbs the heat from the skin (keeping your head cool) until the solid material fully melts. The hat’s cooling effect lasts for around 20-30 minutes.

The coolcaps are a part of the Thermo Tokyo project and the design could be seen at the recent Olympic Games. To learn more about the other TU Delft innovations designed for the Tokyo Olympics, read on here.