This is a personal question but I have noticed that whenever I take a bath with cold water and in a sitting position the water feels way colder than when I am standing up and taking a shower. Is there any scientific explanation for this? It’s possible that maybe I am using colder water and I don’t notice it.
In: Biology
Water is a much better conductor of heat than air. You can absolutely notice the difference between standing in 25°C air (balmy) and being submerged in 25°C water (I wear a drysuit when doing prolonged diving in this temperature).
When you’re sitting in a bathtub the larger quantity of water that is fully touching your submerged body is wicking away your heat much faster than trails of water interspersed with air when you’re standing in a shower.
Really small things lose heat very quickly. Because a shower is made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny water droplets, being further away from the spout means the water drops have more time to lose heat before they reach you.
It’s the water cooling you down, right?
Well in a bath there’s like 50x more water touching you than the small drops hitting you in a shower. More water touching you = more ability to carry your heat away / cool you down. A given bath will always feel colder than shower water hitting you at the same temp.
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