Why are pools or larger body’s of water cold even on a hot day
In: Physics
For starters it’s a large amount of mass. Even a small above ground pool contains literal tons of water. Then you have to factor in the cooling effect of the ground. This is mainly for below ground pools. The earth underneath them stays pretty cool year round, so it keeps removing heat from the pool.
Apparently water also takes a lot more energy to heat up than rocks, possibly because a rock only heats up on the surface, but water keeps mixing around. That means to heat part of it up you need to heat it all up.
That’s for actual temperature. You’re always going to experience water being colder than air at the same temperature. This is because water conducts heat much better. Your sense of temperature isn’t actually measuring your surroundings, it’s your skin, and how much heat is going in and out of it. Since a lot of heat is moving out, your skin cools off and it feels cold.
The super short answer, it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water. Since it takes so long, the water heats up during the day and tends to be warmer at night where it then starts to cool. Same thing happens here, that cooling takes a long time to drop the water temp, so it doesn’t really take effect until morning day.
It takes a long time to heat a lot of water. Think about how long it takes to boil a pot of water… let take something 100,000 that size and apply he’s that is much closer in temp to the water than a stove burner.
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