If 70°F air feels warm and comfortable to us, why does 70°F water feel cool when we swim in it?

Answer 1

does it?

but also water will transfer more heat than air. it could be transfering more heat away from ur body as its coldre than ur temperature

that makes sense so prolly ur answer

Answer 2

Water conducts heat much better than air, this is the reason. What it really means is you have a thin layer of air around your body that stays at body temperature. Since the conductance is soo poor, this air doesn't exchange temperature with other air.

Your body also forms a layer of warm water around it, when you get in the water. But the heat from this layer gets taken away by adjcent water molecules.

If you stand it the wind at 70 degrees, you will feel cold eventually because this layer of warm air that your body had formed gets blown away all the time.

Answer 3

Air does not lower your body temperature, but a sudden dip into the pool sends the message to your nerves that something is threatening to lower your body temp, which isn't good because we are warm-blooded.

Your exact question, and answer, are found here:
http://chaos.fullerton.edu/~mloverud/hw2soln.pdf
Because water is a better conductor than air (about 20 times better, according to the problem), the heat from your body is conducted into the water better than when you are immersed in a "sea" of air. Because the water conducts your body heat away better
than air does, the body feels cooler. This is a very similar situation to the demonstration done in class involving the alternating wood and aluminum rings wrapped in paper. Because aluminum is a better conductor than wood, the aluminum conducts the energy away from the hot paper more effectively than the wood does. As a consequence, the paper remains cooler over the alumi-num rings and does not char or burn as rapidly as it does in the wood sections.

Answer 4

Because our body temperature is 98.6... Water cools the body much more quickly than air. Remember the scene in Titanic... if the air were 31 degrees a person could survive just fine, but cool or cold water will cause hypothermia.

Answer 5

It is not about the temperature, it is about the total heat transfer. Water is much more dense than air, therefore when you get in it, it takes heat from your body much faster than the less dense air making it seem colder. This is the same reason why touching something metal in a room makes it feel colder than say a wood object at the same temperature. The heat transfer coefficent for metal is much higher than wood.

Answer 6

Thermal conductivity of water is 0.591 watt / (meter x kelvin).
Thermal conductivity of air is 241.1 watt / (meter x kelvin).

Specific heat capacity of water is 4190 joule / (kilogram x kelvin)
Specific heat capacity of air at constant pressure is 993 joule / (kilogram x kelvin)


Our body temperature is higher than 70 degree F.

The difference in temperatures while in air and in water is the same.
Since the thermal conductivity of air is 407 times higher than water, the heat is conducted away quickly in air than in water. This means we should feel cool while in air. (We feel an object as cool if heat is conducted away from us.)

Considering the specific heat capacities of air and water, water has the highest heat capacity. Then it has to take large amount of heat from our body even for a small increase of temperature. That is the water remains almost at the same temperature and we feel that it is always cooler than our body temperature.

But in the case of air, the air is quickly raised in temperature compared to water and convection of air starts at once. The process continues.

Thus in both the cases since the temperature of water and air is below our body temperature, we must feel outer surrounding as cool. But in the case of water the difference in temperature is almost steady where as in air it is in dynamic equilibrium.

This difference is felt by us and one cannot say which is warm and which is cooler if both are at the same temperature.

If they are at different temperatures then it is not simple to answer.

Answer 7

Temperature is not the main factor.

THe heat transfer from your body to water is faster that from your body to air. The explanation is due to the arrangement of molecules in each phase of matter.

Answer 8

simply because water moves heat away from your body a lot quicker than air does. But im from england so i work in degC lol

Answer 9

I think it is relative to how hot the air is compared to the water temp..

Answer 10

due to heat of vaporization , same tamparature of water & same tamprature of air have internal energy difference,
from water to convert in the air , it require eqtra heat which is called latent heat of vaporization, whih make differece .due to which same tamprature of air feeels lesss coller tan same temprature of water