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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If the room was hotter you’d think the tiles were hotter than the wood. Some materials are just better at stealing heat or coolness** than others.
** *Coolness doesn’t move from something it just feels that way sometimes, it’s always the heat moving.*
[Veritasium](https://youtu.be/vqDbMEdLiCs) does a great job of explaining.
Basically the temperature might be the same, but they feel different due to thermal conductivity.
Objects that are at a lower temperature to your body temp, and that conduct heat better will feel colder than the other object that is the same temp but not able to conduct the heat away from your body as quickly.
The relevant physical properties are called “[specific heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity)” and “[thermal conductivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity)”.
The former is a measure of how much energy is transferred when a substance changes temperature *and vice versa) and the latter is the rate at which heat travels though and in/out of a substance.
Think about your oven: When you put your arm inside to grab a dish, everything in there is the same temperature, but you don’t get burned by 400F air, only if you touch 400F metal, glass, meat, oil, etc. That is because air transmits heat much more slowly than a metal, so not as much can be put into your skin, plus air cools down much more rapidly as it loses heat than metal does, so the air next to your arm that was 400F might drop 200F in a second or two from just the small amount of energy transferred to your skin while touch the hot dish might transfer much more energy but only drop the temperature of that dish 10 or 20 degrees.
This is also the same reason chicken takes 30 minutes to cook in a 400 degree oven, but only 5 minutes to cook in 400 degree frying oil. Oil can transfer heat into the meat MUCH faster than air can.
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If the room was hotter you’d think the tiles were hotter than the wood. Some materials are just better at stealing heat or coolness** than others.
** *Coolness doesn’t move from something it just feels that way sometimes, it’s always the heat moving.*
The relevant physical properties are called “[specific heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity)” and “[thermal conductivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity)”.
The former is a measure of how much energy is transferred when a substance changes temperature *and vice versa) and the latter is the rate at which heat travels though and in/out of a substance.
Think about your oven: When you put your arm inside to grab a dish, everything in there is the same temperature, but you don’t get burned by 400F air, only if you touch 400F metal, glass, meat, oil, etc. That is because air transmits heat much more slowly than a metal, so not as much can be put into your skin, plus air cools down much more rapidly as it loses heat than metal does, so the air next to your arm that was 400F might drop 200F in a second or two from just the small amount of energy transferred to your skin while touch the hot dish might transfer much more energy but only drop the temperature of that dish 10 or 20 degrees.
This is also the same reason chicken takes 30 minutes to cook in a 400 degree oven, but only 5 minutes to cook in 400 degree frying oil. Oil can transfer heat into the meat MUCH faster than air can.
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Different materials have different specific heat capacities. A heat capacity is the amount of energy (Joules) it takes to heat up 1kg, 1 Kelvin (unit of heat). So it takes a lot more energy to heat up tiles than it does wood. So the tiles suck out a lot more energy (heat) from your foot than the wood does before it reaches approximately the same temperature as your foot.
If the room was hotter you’d think the tiles were hotter than the wood. Some materials are just better at stealing heat or coolness** than others.
** *Coolness doesn’t move from something it just feels that way sometimes, it’s always the heat moving.*
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