Can people feel the temperature?

Many of us think we can measure the temperature of our surroundings. But it is not so. In this article we will try to figure out where the catch is, and what do we really feel?

The temperature of ordinary things is a measure of the average speed of movement of the atoms and molecules of which they are made. The greater the average speed of movement of atoms and molecules that make up an object, the higher its temperature. It seems to us that there is a clear correlation: if something has high temperature, then it seems hot to us and vice versa. Thus, we perceive our sensations as very accurate measurements. However, this is not quite true.

If you touch a piece of metal or a book that has just been pulled out of the freezer, the metal will appear much colder than the book. At the same time the metal and the book will have the same temperature, but the metal will appear much colder.

Metal is a substance that conducts heat very well, and quickly "takes" it away from warmer bodies and quickly "gives off" heat to objects that are colder than metal. And with paper everything is quite the opposite, it conducts heat poorly, "gives" and "takes it away" slowly. Despite the fact that the metal and the book have the same temperature, the movement of molecules in our hands is absorbed much faster by the metal than by paper. Metal causes the temperature of our hands to drop faster, which makes the metal feel colder.

What we actually feel is the temperature of our hands. Our internal thermometer measures only its own temperature (like any other thermometer, by the way). You can measure tactilely the temperature of other items by keeping them in contact with your skin. The thermosensitive nerves in our skin can only directly measure the temperature of the skin itself. When we touch something, we do not feel its temperature, but only feel the effect of this object on our skin.

A cloud of steam from your pot appears to be much hotter than the hot dry air from an oven, which is actually hotter. Steam transfers a lot more molecular motion to your skin than air does. We can say that hot and cold are concepts that are fundamentally different from high and low temperature. A hot object is an object that gives off a lot of energy; a cold object is an object that gives off little energy. Indeed, when someone has a lot of something, this does not mean that he gives a lot.