Shower

A shower is the act of spraying water on the body, or a device built for that purpose. When 'taken' for personal hygiene, soap or detergent are often used to aid washing of the skin, and shampoo to aid hair washing. Showering generally uses less water and energy than taking a bath. A full bathroom may include a shower, but a half bathroom will not.

History

The hygiene regimen in the form of a shower goes back to the time of the Greeks, as evidenced by extant vases and murals.^[1] During the Scottish Enlightenment Lord Monboddo showered every morning with cold water on his front porch to emulate the Greeks and profess his belief in the practice as healthful;^[2] his habit, while eccentric, was well publicized with the intelligentsia of that era. Another step toward the spread of showering was when the Prussian military installed showering rooms in their barracks in 1879.

Cultural significance

Group nudity is commonly accepted in many cultures when showering or bathing, as long as it is not mixed-gender bathing, in which nudity is much less commonly accepted.

Showering in the Western World is mostly part of a daily routine, but is also practiced for wellness and relaxation. Showering has today largely replaced bathing.

Showering procedure

Showering results in a few phases, in which the skin, and usually the hair, are wet with water. Then the cleansing products are applied, allowed to work, and subsequently rinsed out. If necessary, soaping and rinsing is re-performed.

Elderly and disabled

Showering is easier and more secure than bathing, for elderly and disabled people as it requires less effort to step out of and also presents a lower risk of slipping and falling. ^{[citation needed]}

Purpose

Various purposes of showering include routine hygiene, as well as safety (as in chemical spills, mass decontamination, etc.).

Structure and designs

File:Sensor operated column shower for deconference.jpg

Modern sensor-operated column shower

There are free-standing showers, but also showers which are integrated into a bathtub. Showers are separated from the surrounding area through watertight curtains (shower curtain), sliding doors, or folding doors, in order to protect the space from spraying water. There are seldom floor-level showers. Here, the wall and floor of the shower areas are tiled or otherwise made waterproof.

Places such as a swimming pool, a locker room, and a military facility, have multiple showers. There may be shower rooms without divisions (typically sex-segregated) or shower stalls (typically open at the top; often in shower rooms which are sex-segregated anyway).

Anthony David Rueli of the University of Massachusetts researched the aspect of why shower curtains billow inwards during showering ("shower-curtain effect") and received for it the Ig Nobel Prize in 2001.

A shower head is a perforated nozzle that distributes the water over a large solid angle. Thus less water can be used to wet the same area. Low flow shower heads can use water even more efficiently by aerating the water stream. Some shower heads can be adjusted to spray different patterns of water. Hard water may result in calcium and magnesium deposits clogging the head, causing it to lose effectiveness.

Shower curtains

File:Shower curtain.jpg

A shower curtain with a penguin pattern

Shower curtains are curtains used in bathtubs with a shower or shower enclosures and are usually made out of vinyl, cloth or plastic. The shower curtain has two main purposes: to provide privacy and to prevent water from flooding the bathroom. Shower curtains usually surround the bath inside the tub and are held up with railings or curtain rods on the ceiling. To accommodate the different types of bathtub shapes, railings can come in different sizes and are flexible in their design. Many people use two shower curtains, one that is inside the tub that can be purely functional or can be decorative as well, and an outer shower curtain, which is purely decorative.

References

^ Multicultural Resource Center: Showers
^ Cloyd, E.L., James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1972)