Car and Driver: The Fastest Way to Defog Your Windshield, Courtesy of a Former NASA Engineer

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Winter’s here, and for lots of us, that means dealing with a foggy windshield full of condensation when we go to start our cars. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take that long for your defroster to clear your windshield, but if you’re harried and already late for work, that extra time waiting can feel like an eternity. And it’s no good to be driving around looking through a half-obscured windshield like a dingus.

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Luckily, former NASA engineer and current YouTube science guy Mark Rober has figured out some easy tricks that will help you blast fog off the inside of your windshield in half the time. This is no old wives’ tale—this is science.

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In this six-minute video, Rober explains exactly what causes water vapor to condense on the inside of your windshield, using stone-simple visual teaching aides and explanations. Then, via a series of rigorous experiments that would satisfy the evidential lust of any scientist or engineer, he tests all the different air conditioning settings you probably have in your car to find the absolute quickest setting for blasting away fog.

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Now, we should note: what Rober is doing is defogging the inside of the windshield. Defrosting, or removing frozen ice from the outside of the windshield, is a different matter altogether—one that you should use an ice scraper (and never, ever hot water) to resolve.

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• How To: Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots-
• Winter Driving Guide: Tips to Survive the Snow and Ice-
• It’s Simple, Really: How a Differential Works, Explained in a Vintage Video-

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Anyway, here are the HVAC settings that Rober discovered clears fog the fastest:

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• Defroster fan on highest setting-
• Temperature control on its hottest-
• A/C turned on-
• Recirculate turned off-
• Crack your windows-

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For the science behind why this setting works best, as well as how fog forms in the first place, check out Rober’s video:

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This story originally appeared on Road & Track via Sploid.

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[Professur]

So what am I supposed to do to DEFROST the INSIDE of the windshield? Fog isn't really a problem at minus four billion centigrade

[Ringo64]

Or move to Florida. That worked for me