You press the button.

Ding.

On the wall is now… A thermostat.

Wow. How exciting. You can also see a couple of vents, up by the ceiling, presumably for letting in the temperature-controlled air.

I guess you can play with the thermostat, if you like?

You push the “up” button. The thermostat beeps.

Then you press it over and over again, for about a minute and a half.

The thermostat gives up at 95 degrees fahrenheit. I guess it doesn’t want you to accidentally kill yourself from heatstroke or something.

Then you sit back and wait.

The room doesn’t heat up immediately. You hear some machinery kick on outside the walls, and feel a slight breeze of warm air.

It takes maybe half an hour for the room to get hotter and hotter, until finally the machine stops humming.

At this point, you are sweating. Profusely.

It is exceedingly warm in here, and there isn’t even any shade you can go to to get away from it. This is just the heat of the room.

Turns out, setting the thermostat as high as it can go, makes the room really hot! Shocking!

Now what?

You push the “down” button. It makes a beep.

And then you push the button repeatedly. It gives up at 45 degrees fahrenheit. Cooling systems really shouldn’t go lower than that, or else they freeze themselves.

Unless, of course, it’s colder than that outside, in which case 45 is actually warming the house.

Anyways, you hear a machine on the other side of the wall kick on, and a cool breeze flow through the room.

It slowly gets colder and colder, taking maybe half an hour before the machine decides the desired temperature has been reached and turns itself off.

By that time you’re shivering.

Turns out, turning the thermostat all the way down, makes things cold!

Shocking!

Now what?

You test the air in the room. Is it a bit warm? A bit cold? (If you fiddled with it beforehand, the answer to this is absolutely “yes”.) Could it be better?

It can! You push the buttons on the thermostat, adjusting the temperature. You can hear a machine outside the walls kick on, and feel a slight breeze flow through the vents.

It feels quite nice.

It doesn’t take long, maybe five minutes if that, for the machine to turn back off.

This is it. The ideal temperature.

Well done.

Now what?

To be fair, there’s not much you can do with a thermostat. It’s a pretty boring thing, if a necessary one.

DO YOU PRESS THE BUTTON? Yes No