Why does it feel warmer to walk barefoot over wooden floors than to walk over ceramic tiles even if both are side-by-side in the same room?
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You’re not actually feeling how hot or cold a thing is when you touch it. You’re feeling the exchange of thermal energy. Touching something warmer than you will feel hot because your body is absorbing the heat. Touching something colder than you will feel cold because heat is leaving your body. How hot or cold these things are depends on how fast the heat exchange is. More conductive materials (metal) will exchange heat faster than insulating materials (wood)
So the ceramic floor “feels” cold because it is absorbing heat from your foot faster than the wood floor.
If you touch something, there’s heat exchange.
Stuff that’s heavier (but just a big) contains more subatomic particles. And the more particles, the more thermal energy.
So if you step on something lightweight, like wood, the material directly in contact with your foot warms up more easily because there’s fewer particles to warm up.
And if you step on something heavy, like stone, there’s way more particles to warm up, so the stone stays cold longer, and there’s more thermal energy transferred from your foot to the stone.
It’s because some materials like sucking up heat more than others, and tile likes sucking up heat more than wood. When the tile sucks the heat out of the bottom of your feet, it feels like it’s cold, but wood doesn’t like sucking heat out of your feet, so your feet don’t lose their heat so they feel warm.
when you walk barefoot on a wooden floor the wood does not transfer heat away from your body as quickly as a ceramic tile would so your feet feel warmer. This is because the wood absorbs and retains some of your body heat which can create a sensation of warmth.
when you walk barefoot on a wooden floor the wood does not transfer heat away from your body as quickly as a ceramic tile would so your feet feel warmer. This is because the wood absorbs and retains some of your body heat which can create a sensation of warmth.
Compare it to bigger extremes – room temperature carpet and room temperature garage floors.
The reason is that garage floors’ surfaces transfer heat from your feet much quicker than carpet.
Back to your two less extreme examples – they simply transfer heat at different rates.
If you touch something, there’s heat exchange.
Stuff that’s heavier (but just a big) contains more subatomic particles. And the more particles, the more thermal energy.
So if you step on something lightweight, like wood, the material directly in contact with your foot warms up more easily because there’s fewer particles to warm up.
And if you step on something heavy, like stone, there’s way more particles to warm up, so the stone stays cold longer, and there’s more thermal energy transferred from your foot to the stone.
It’s because some materials like sucking up heat more than others, and tile likes sucking up heat more than wood. When the tile sucks the heat out of the bottom of your feet, it feels like it’s cold, but wood doesn’t like sucking heat out of your feet, so your feet don’t lose their heat so they feel warm.
when you walk barefoot on a wooden floor the wood does not transfer heat away from your body as quickly as a ceramic tile would so your feet feel warmer. This is because the wood absorbs and retains some of your body heat which can create a sensation of warmth.
Compare it to bigger extremes – room temperature carpet and room temperature garage floors.
The reason is that garage floors’ surfaces transfer heat from your feet much quicker than carpet.
Back to your two less extreme examples – they simply transfer heat at different rates.
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