Why do we feel an ice cold sensation for a brief moment before the pain of a thousand suns when we touch boiling hot water/a super hot surface?

489 views

Why do we feel an ice cold sensation for a brief moment before the pain of a thousand suns when we touch boiling hot water/a super hot surface?

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The way that your hand senses temperatures is surprising. There are sensors for “warm” or “cool”, and a different sensor for “**VERY**”!

I saw a really fun exhibit at the [Exploratorium](https://www.exploratorium.edu/) museum in San Francisco. It had a bar you could touch that *felt* like it was super, burning hot, but really it wasn’t. It had alternating coils of luke warm and super cold. When you touched it, your brain interpreted “warm” plus “VERY” as “very hot,” even though that’s not actually what it was. Here’s an [article](http://annex.exploratorium.edu/xref/exhibits/hot-cold.html) about that.

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.