I understand that things like metal often feel colder than wood, but I wouldn’t think that something like my feet could considering my feet are “alive” flesh and blood. How is this??
In: Biology
>my feet are “alive” flesh and blood.
the blood part. poor circulation will make anything not warm. your body’s capacity to heat itself depends on blood flow. extremities like fingers and toes with the least direct access to the blood flow from the heart tend to get cold first.
Your question is somewhat unclear. If you place your feet on something that feels cold, your feet are warmer than it – it feels cold because you feel the difference in that temperature. If you touch your feet with your hands and they feel cold but you touch something else that doesn’t, there’s two things going on. First, your feet are colder than your hands or fingers are, so they feel cold to you. The other object you’re touching may also be cold, but doesn’t transfer heat very well and so you don’t feel a different in temperature as sharply as you would with a material that does transfer heat. In other words, you can’t feel it being cold as well as you can something else. It’s still cold, though.
You don’t feel hot and cold directly. What you feel is the rate of change in thermal energy. Hot things give you thermal energy as heat and cold things take it away. Even if two things are the same temperate, like wood and metal, they do not transfer heat at the same rate. The metal will feel hotter or colder to the touch because it more thermally conductive and heat energy moves through it better.
Latest Answers