Hey everybody, welcome back to Gear 30 on the Blister Podcast Network.

I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at

blisterreview.com.

So, you know, when you walk into a store and you see all these fancy jackets, ski jackets or

rain jackets or whatever, and they have these shiny tags on them and those tags say things

like 20K waterproof or 15K breathability. Do you actually know what that stuff means or where

those ratings even came from? Well, that is our topic here today. And our guest is Dr. Lauren Cooper.

Dr. Cooper did her PhD in mechanical engineering at CU Boulder.

She has taught at the Colorado School of Mines and CU Boulder and Cal Poly and currently is a

CU Boulder professor who lives here in the Gunnison Valley teaching at Western Colorado University as part of the

Western Colorado University NCU Boulder Partnership Program. And Dr. Cooper is an integral part of what we are

doing at Blister Labs. So that is what we are looking at here today, the history and the origins of some of these

ratings and standards. And Dr. Cooper and I talk about some of the things that we are working on

to perhaps come up with some more real world applicable ratings and standards.

Now, just before we get going here, we wanted to let you all know that the print edition of our new Winter Buyers Guide has shipped.

The books are on their way.

So some of you ought to be receiving those books literally today,

and then others of you, depending on where in the world you live. Well, what I can say is

they have been shipped out two days ago, and the guide should be in your hands soon. Now, I should also say that the digital edition of our

buyer's guide is available for purchase right now, and we do still have some copies of the

print edition of the guide available, but we are now in a first come, first served situation. So if you want the print edition of the

guide and you haven't ordered it yet, well, you probably should because it's a big,

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