I feel stupid to ask but here goes.
So you can sit in a sauna where the thermometer measures the air at 80oc, and it’s fairly comfortable. But if you sit in water which a thermometer measures at 80oc, you die pretty instantly.
So I get that water is denser and so transmits heat faster – but then… what is the thermometer measuring if not heat transfer???
Tia
In: Physics
Think of temperature like the height of a hill and heat transfer as your speed going down it.
The air and water are two hills that are both 80m tall. One is really wide (shallow slope) and you can walk down it slowly without much worry. The other is super steep and you will end up tumbling down and hurting yourself. An 80m hill has more potential to be “dangerous” than a 40m hill, but the steepness is what really matters.
The thermometer is measuring the height of the hill.
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