Eli5: How come wood stays cool to the touch in high temperature environments (e.g. saunas) when all other common materials would be hot?

Question

Eli5: How come wood stays cool to the touch in high temperature environments (e.g. saunas) when all other common materials would be hot?

In: 671

Answer 1

What you feel is not temperature, but heat transfer to and from your body. Wood isn’t very good at heat transfer. That means it’ll take longer to get hot from heat and longer to transfer heat to you. It also means that if it’s in contact with heat on one side, it’ll be cooler on the other side than metal for example.