How are you able to feel wetness through latex gloves without getting wet?

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How are you able to feel wetness through latex gloves without getting wet?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s simple, your skin is extremely sensitive; also latex gloves are quite thin. Not to mention water has slight electrical properties that could possibly be interfacing with neurons. Another aspect is visual stimulus. You could “sense” the water because you can see water is trickling over your hand… this follows with the “frog in a pot” analogy, also mirror box/phantom limb pain experiments. A lot of people oblivious to physical stimuli will often take longer to react to their threshold that someone actively observing/aware of what’s happening. Threat level detections is a factor their too. That said, everyone’s perceptions vary wildly in magnitude and diversity. But at the heart of it, humans can be extremely precise tools. Thin latex gloves are of little hindrance.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Humans don’t actually feel wetness- we don’t have separate receptors for it. We feel the change in friction and temperature. Because a latex glove is very thin, it makes almost no difference in perceiving those two things.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You’re not “feeling wetness”. You are feeling pressure and temperature changes that your brain has been trained to perceive as wetness.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your brain perceives localized changes in temperature and pressure as the feeling of “wetness”. For example: your eyes see your hand go under water but your brain feels temp and pressure changes – so your brain adapts to tell you this is what wet feels like.

Since you can feel temperature and pressure changes through latex gloves your wired to “feel” wet, even if you aren’t actually wet.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can feel the lubrication that moisture provides between the glove and the other surface. You can feel evaporative cooling as the moisture evaporates. You can feel the heat transfer from your skin through the gloves yo the (presumably) cold liquid prior to evaporation.

All three are the same phenomena that you would feel if there were liquid directly on your skin, so it feels very similar: enough to potentially trick your brain into thinking your hand is wet.