Why when you step out the shower are you extremely cold for about 3 minutes but then you go back to normal temperature?
In: Biology
This is actually a physics question more than biology.
Water’s a liquid. There are a bunch of water molecules jostling around, but they stick to each other which means they tend to stay together as a mass.
Temperature is the average speed of the individual molecules. There are a few molecules that have way above-average speed. They’re moving fast enough to overcome the stickyness and escape into the air.
This process is called “evaporation.”
When only the highest-speed molecules can leave, the average speed of the remaining ones is lower. It’s a mathematical certainty.
So when you come out of the shower, the water on your skin starts evaporating. That makes you cold. Once the water’s mostly turned into gas, the evaporation process is no longer cooling you down.
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