QED: If I make myself a nice hot cup of coffee, inevitably get called to something ‘more important’ and I’m away for an extended period of time, my cup of coffee is no longer hot. I would expect that, as part of the universes ongoing quest for equilibrium, my coffee would be room temperature, but actually it always _feels_ somewhat colder.
Is this a trick of the mind or is it actually colder somehow?
In: Physics
You can’t actually ‘feel’ temperature. What you feel is heat flux – the rate at which heat transfers.
While temperature is a component in heat flux, material composition is generally more important. Materials like water have significantly greater heat capacity and conductivity than air, so they ‘feel’ either hotter or colder than they really are (depending on the relative temperature between you and the outside medium).
If you take a thermometer and stick it into the cup of coffee that’s been cooling on your counter all day, you’ll see it’s the same temperature as the ambient air.
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