Eli5: If heat is energy, how does cold wind exist? How can air move (have cold gusts of wind) if it’s not hot? Where does the energy for movement of cold air come from?

1.22K viewsOtherPlanetary Science

I asked this in school and the teacher thought I was trolling and didn’t answer me. It’s been like 20 years and I still think about it, it drives me crazy lol.

In: Planetary Science

19 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The feeling of cold air is simply your body’s perception of air that is lower than the ambient temperature and your body losing heat as a result of that.

You’re conflating two separate things as far as the motion goes. Heat isn’t how fast something is moving, it’s how fast the individual molecules moving around in amongst each other. Think of it like a party bus full of people. The people are the molecules. When they move around more, it’s hot inside the bus. When they aren’t, it’s cool inside the bus. But this is separate from whether or not the bus is moving. The speed of the bus and the energy of the “molecules” inside the bus are two unrelated things.

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