No. 20Everyday life3 minviews 58
Published by GK Library Annex
Is metal really colder than wood?
A wooden door and a metal handle sit in the same room. Why do they feel so different to your fingertips?
A wooden door in your room feels fine, yet the metal handle can feel strikingly cold. Many people assume metal is simply a colder material, but two objects left in the same room for a while are at almost the same temperature. What differs is how fast heat leaves your hand.
A thermometer reads them almost the same
Anything left in a room for a long time ends up close to the temperature of the air. If you measure a wooden door and a metal handle with a thermometer, the difference is small.
Your hand is warmer than that, so the moment you touch something, heat flows from your hand into it. Metal conducts heat more than a hundred times better than wood, so it spreads the heat inward quickly and keeps drawing warmth from your palm. Wood conducts heat poorly, so the spot you touch warms up fast and your hand cools less. The coldness you feel is closer to how fast your hand loses heat than to the temperature of the object.
On hot days it works in reverse
The same principle works the other way. A metal slide feels far hotter than a wooden bench in the same summer sun because metal passes heat into your hand quickly. Sauna benches are made of wood for the same reason. Hot wood warms your skin slowly, but hot metal makes it burn the moment you touch it.
So rather than calling metal a cold material, it is more accurate to say metal passes on the temperature difference with your hand faster. In winter, touch a metal button and a plastic switch one after the other and you will feel the difference clearly.
A small experiment at home
Put an ice cube on a stainless steel tray and another on a plastic cutting board in the same room. The tray feels colder to your hand, yet the ice melts faster on the tray, because the tray carries the heat of the room into the ice quickly. You can see with your own eyes that feeling cold and the speed of heat flow are the same story.
Everyday objects hide this principle too. Pot handles wrapped in wood or plastic, and gloves that feel especially welcome on a metal railing in winter, are both ways to slow how fast heat moves in and out of your hand. A metal handle on a pan that has been heating for a while is dangerous to grab bare-handed because metal carries heat all the way to the end of the handle.
Related reads
Metal is not a colder material. It feels cold because it pulls the warmth from your hand quickly.
Notes and references · Heat conduction and the feeling of cold. Objects in the same room reach similar temperatures. Metal conducts heat over a hundred times better than wood, so it draws heat from your hand quickly, and skin senses the rate of heat loss as cold more than temperature itself.
Editorial standardsReport an error
Quick quiz