Why do we get cold when we are wet?

Question

Even when we are at the beach on a hot day or have just gotten out of a hot shower. Is it because the water cools downs and then absorbs heat from your body? Or could it be that your hairs are stuck down so piloerection isn't effective? Or simply that our bodies are exposed with little or no clothing on?

Answer 1

Mainly, it's evaporation. The air surrounding us is usually dry; the water is at air temp, often less than our 98 degree body temperature. But the slight breeze in the air (even the movement of air as we move around a room) makes the water evaporate.

Changing the state of water - whether for evaporation or for creating steam (in other words water going from liquid state to gas) takes a lot of energy (i.e. heat). With water on your skin, the water begins to evaporate (you notice your skin getting drier). The energy (heat) for the evaporation comes from your body, which is warmer than the outside air. Your body heat goes into the water, it evaporates, and you feel much cooler.

The more exposed skin you have, the more is subject to quick evaporation, the cooler you feel.

Answer 2

Hot moves towards cold and since most of the time your body temp is hotter then the water it acts as a radiator in your car the water absorbs the hot and carrys it away from your body also your pores on your skin open to allow your body to cool itself when it starts to get hot that is why you sweat it is your bodys central heating and a/c system working the body is an amazing working machine hope this answers your question or at least helps alittle

Answer 3

This is due to evaporation that occurred on our skin.
evaporation is where the water on surface becomes gas. when this happens, energy is been given off which will bring heat away from the body. evaporation is different from boiling, it can occur anywhere, anytime, any place, at any temperature( even if its freezing). so when evaporation occurs particles have more space between them( solid is cloosely packed together --> so it has a fixed shape, its hard, and cannot be compressed, then is liquid--> its particle is losely packed as compared to solid-->it doesn't have a fixed shape , then gas--> gas particle can move about freely at high speed, therefore its compress able.) k back to topic so when this happens, it acts like putting alcohol on the skin. u will feel cool because of evaporation had occur.


hope this can help u.

Answer 4

the previous answers pointing to evaporation are correct

evaporative cooling is the reason we sweat

if we are covered with water, especially when we aren't particularly hot, (we aren't exercising and sweating) then every bit of water that evaporates requires heat from its surrounding, which, mostly, is the wet person

540 calories are needed to evaporate 1 gram of water

that is a lot of heat removal

the evaporative cooling is particularly effective if there is a breeze so that new dry air is coming up against your skin all the time, as the already damp air that picked water off you, is pushed away

substances that evaporate at lower temperatures than water, for example rubbing alcohol, will feel even cooler as they evaporate

Answer 5

In the 18th century, John Wesley wrote a book about curing diseases; it advised cold baths as prevention and stated that chilling causes the common cold. The work was widely reprinted in the 19th century. Another book by William Buchan in the 18th century also gave wet feet and clothes as the cause of the common cold.

The idea of microscopic infectious agents causing disease arose in the second half of the 19th century. Initially, bacteria were suspected to be the cause of the common cold, and vaccines were produced based on this theory; these were still prescribed in the 1950s.

Viruses had been described beginning with the 1890s: infectious agents so small that they could pass through all filters and could not be seen under a microscope. In 1914, Walter Kruse, a professor in Leipzig, Germany, showed that viruses caused the common cold: nose secretions of a cold sufferer were diluted, filtered, and introduced into the noses of volunteers, producing colds in about half of the cases. These findings were not widely accepted, until they were repeated in the 1920s by Alphonse Dochez, first in chimpanzees, and then in human volunteers using a double-blind setup. Nevertheless, in 1932 a major textbook on the common cold by David Thomson still presented bacteria as the most likely cause.

In Britain, the Common Cold Unit was set up by the civilian Medical Research Council in 1946. The unit worked with volunteers who were infected with various viruses. The rhinovirus was discovered there. In the late 1950s, researchers were able to grow one of these cold viruses in a tissue culture (it would not grow in fertilized chicken eggs, the method used for many other viruses). In the 1970s, the CCU demonstrated that treatment with interferon during the incubation phase of rhinovirus infection protects somewhat against the disease, but no practical treatment could be developed. The unit was closed in 1989, just two years after it demonstrated the benefit of zinc gluconate lozenges in the prophylaxis and treatment of rhinovirus colds.

Answer 6

The greater the rate of evaporation of the water droplets stuck to your skin, the colder it feels.

Alcohol usually evaporates at a faster rate than water, so when you splash some alcohol on your hands, they feel like chilling.

Rate of evaporation varies depending on what is the substance we are dealing with, the speed of the breeze blowing on it -- faint breeze feels less colder --, and how big is the relative humidity of the air -- moist days are kinda warmer even when you're wet.

Answer 7

Evaporation of the water removes heat from the surface of your body causing you to cool down. Same reason you sweat

Answer 8

The drop in internal body temp sets off a chain reaction such as shivering to get some temp back through kinetics which is any movement that will cause a raise in body temp, oh look over there on the grassy knoll it's 2 points

Answer 9

this is because evaporation takes place all the time and so when we are wet the water evaporates . as we all know evaporation causes cooling and so we feel cool or cold . and for your idea about a hot day or a hot shower EVAPORATION STILL CAUSES COOLING no matter what .

Answer 10

Cause the water starts evaporating and it takes heat with it. The wetter a substance is the sooner it starts evaporating and the more heat it takes with it. Therefore if you are covered in mud you will not get cold as fast as when you all wet with water, because water is wetter than mud.

What I want to know it, what is wetter than water?