eli5 Why are some surfaces– like metal — colder than others?

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imagine im in a kitchen. if i touch a paper plate, it feels lukewarm. if i touch a knife, it feels kinda cold. why do they feel like different temperatures?

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Metals conduct heat very well in the same way they conduct electricity well (and for the same underlying physical reasons). This means that when you touch a metal object that is colder than your hand, your heat leaves your hand and quickly gets distributed throughout the entire metal object. So that metal object effectively saps a lot of heat out of your hand, making you feel cold because the temperature at your nerve endings in the skin quickly drops. Conversely, paper does not conduct heat well, so when you touch it the transferred heat stays in the paper just near the place being touched, limiting the amount of heat that actually leaves your hand and thus not triggering the cold sensation.

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