Eli5: Why does it take hours for frozen ground beef to thaw on the counter but just minutes if left in a bowl of cool water?
In: 6
Air vs water. Everything has a property called “thermal conductivity” which basically measures how well something can move heat around. The thermal conductivity of water is ~20x that of air. The water is dethawing it 20x faster than air. But I’d say “just a few minutes” is a bit of an exaggeration, it can still take a fair bit of time.
This is the same reason why a pool at room temperature feels cold when air at room temperature feels fine.
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