Why does some materials feel colder than others even in same ambient temperature?
In: Physics
Incidentally, heat transfer is why you can walk on hot coals. The ash is very poor at transferring heat, so the brief contacts of your feet don’t heat them much. Try to walk on the metal tray at the same temperature as the coals, and you’re Darth Vader.
Some materials are better at transporting heat than others.
A material with a higher thermal conductivity will suck the heat from you more quickly and will thus feel colder.
[edit] To be a little bit clearer: You are only able to feel something is hot or cold because your are echanging heat with it, which is lowering or raising the temperature of the sensors in your skin. If the object as a low conductivity and “refuses” to transfer heat from/to you, it will feel closer to ambient because your sensors won’t change temperature.
To ‘feel cold’ you have to have a heat transfer between 2 objects. Take a book and a metal plate at the same temperature. The book doesn’t feel cold(or hot) because when you touch it very little heat is transferred. The metal plate does feel cold because, despite being at the same temperature as the book, metal can hold more heat at a given temperature than the paper book. So heat transfers from your hand to the plate.
Basically different things have a different heat capacity. This is also why steam burns are way worse than boiling water burns, there is more heat.
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