Example: if I straighten my hair, washing it in water will un straighten it, but being in super cold air won’t.
In: Chemistry
Because heat, like water, softens your hair and makes it malleable. Once they’re cooled off, the structure hardens again, and they stay in their shape. Hair works a lot like plastics.
It’s like boiling an egg – once you boil it, even if put into a freezer it won’t turn back.
The same analogy is for hair, the heat makes the hair stay put, while water softens the hair and allows it to reshape.
When you use heat to straighten your hair, you’re changing how the building blocks of your hair are connected. Cold air doesn’t undo this because it’s not strong enough to break those connections.
But when you wash your hair with water, it can loosen up those connections and let your hair go back to its natural shape, like curly or wavy.
So cold air is too weak to make a big difference, but water is strong enough to “reset” your hair
Think of it as slightly melting your hair (or, allowing it to reorganize while hot). It simply cooling immediately afterwards is the resolidifying/”locking it in” part. Cooling it *further* won’t do anything–you need to heat it up again, or apply some other process that allows it to reorganize again.
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