Why can tinfoil be touched immediately after coming out of a super hot (hundreds of degrees) oven?
In: Other
It’s a combination of:
* High heat conductivity (aluminum transfers heat quickly)
* High surface area-to-volume ratio (an object exchanges heat with the environment through that object’s surface, and aluminum foil is almost *all* surface)
* Low mass (the actual amount of “stuff” in a sheet of aluminum foil is very small, so it can’t retain much heat energy)
So as soon as you take it out of the oven, it starts losing the relatively-small amount of heat energy it has very rapidly from the entirety of its surface. Which means that it cools down *super* quickly.
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