Why does glass feel cold?

Question

If we touch a metal object a room temperature, the metal feels cold, this is explained as metal is a good conductor of heat and allows heat from your hand to flow into the metal.

Wood feels 'warmer' even though it is also at room temperature because it not such a good conductor of heat and so heat does not flow out of your hand.

So ... why does glass (a poor conductor of heat ...) feel cool to the touch?

Answer 1

Glass has large specific heat capacity, thus it sucks out more heat from your skin than materials with lower heat capacity.

Specific heat capacity, also known simply as specific heat, is the measure of the heat energy required to increase the temperature of a unit quantity of a substance by a certain temperature interval. More heat energy is required to increase the temperature of a substance with high specific heat capacity than one with low specific heat capacity.

Answer 2

Because of all the water vapour in the our it condences to a liquid it is called condensation that why the window is cold

Answer 3

Glass allows you to get a very close and uniform contact from your skin to the glass -- on the microscopic scale.  This allows for maximum heat transfer from your hand to the glass.  As it sounds like you already know:  your hand, being warmed by body heat, is typically warmer than the glass (at room temperature) and thus heat must transfer, as expected, from hand to glass (and thus feel cold).

Although glass (Si02) is typically considered an electrical insulator, that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't ready to absorb heat.  In fact, the Si-O bond has some strong absorption peaks in the infra-red which could actually enhance this heat transfer.

Answer 4

Glass may be a poor conductor of electricity, but it isn't a poor conductor of heat, as anyone who has tried to pull a pyrex dish out of the oven without a potholder could tell you.  Glass has more mass per unit volume than wood, which means it holds more heat and can take more heat from warmer objects, like your hand on a windowpane on a cold winter night.

Answer 5

Larger Specific heat capacity could do that, because the heat is just sucked up by the glass itself.  To equalize the temp difference, more heat is required to raise the same amount of temperature on glass than on wood.  So the glass would feel cooler to the touch.

Specific heat capacity for Wood is 0.42

Specific heat capacity for Glass is 0.84

Answer 6

Glass will only feel cold for a short period of time. Glass is dense and and extremely smooth therefore your skin comes into contact with a great number of particles.  Each particle seeks equilibrium which will happen very quickly but because of the poor heat conduction properties of glass it will not draw out more heat than equilibrium.

Answer 7

It's not just down to the heat conductivity. It's also due to the specific heat capacity of the material in question. ie the amount of heat energy required to warm the material by a given amount. Materials with high specific heat capacities feel colder at room temperature because they absorb more heat from your hand when you touch them. e.g. water is a poor conductor of heat but feels cold at room temperatue because it has a very high specific heat capacity. Metal and glass also have high specific heat capacity whereas plastic and wood have low specific heat capacities.

Answer 8

it probably feels cold coz the staff keep it in a chiller so the drinks will keep colder for longer just like in restaurants they keep the plates hotter so your food will stay wamer for longer

Answer 9

Because it's very old and feels the heat.  Wrap it in a cardi and it will be cosy as a bug in a rug.

Answer 10

Glass is still a better thermal conductor than air, but mostly its due to the Specific Heat of the glass. (the amount of energy it takes to warm the glass through a defined temperature difference)

Greenhouses get hot because sunlight passes thru the glass but the heat doesn't pass back out thru the glass.

Glass is a poor conductor of heat, thermal conductivity of 1 to 1.5 W/(m K), in the same range as many plastics.

stainless steel is 17 W/(m K), aluminum is 240 w/(m K), copper is 400 W/(m K), and air is 0.000002 W/(m K)

Answer 11

The moisture in the air condenses on glass easier. You feel the conductivity of the water