Why does hot water feel hotter when you move your hand or body through it than when you’re still?
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Your body is sensitive to changes in temperature, rather than actually determining the absolute temperature of anything. It “gets used to” a given temperature.
For example, you know a hot plate is hot because it’s hotter than the air your fingers were touching a moment ago. Similarly, keep your hand in a bowl of warm water for a minute, then put it in another bowl filled with lukewarm water: that second bowl will feel ice-cold.
Moving your hand in hot water disrupts this “getting used to” process because of the nature of movement itself (stimulating blood flow, so the system is exposed to relatively cooler blood from elsewhere in the body, throwing off its frame of reference etc.) and how your nerves react to it. So you feel hot all over again.
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