If I fill a water bottle with room temperature water. And I put it in the shower. And I take a hot steamy shower. Why does the water in that bottle feel cold when I pour it?
In: Chemistry
There’s two things going on. First, water has a very high heat capacity, meaning that it takes a lot of energy to warm it up. It might have seemed like a long time for you, but it was nowhere near long enough for the water in the bottle to equalize with the shower water.
Second is that your body’s heat receptors don’t really tell you whether something is hot or cold. They just tell you whether it’s hotter or colder than your body. So, you have a bottle of slightly-above-room-temperature water flowing over skin that had just got out of a hot steamy shower. It’s only natural that it will feel cool to you.
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