They have poor thermal conductivity, but still much better than fabrics or wood. They also have a high thermal mass.
Tiles are a bit cooler not because they are lower in the room, but because they easily lose heat to the air. They aren’t that much cooler though, and a piece of wood the same temp would feel much warmer.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
You can hold a ceramic tile in your hand and apply a blowtorch to the other side. They’re better insulators than conductors. That’s why you see ceramics used for insulating hot food bowls from wooden tables, or a more extreme example, ceramic tiles on re-entry vehicles. Ceramic is not a good conductor of heat.
Wood is about 0.1 W/mK, ceramics about 1 W/mK, and copper is about 400 W/mK.
A more apt comparison would be ceramic floor vs wood flooring, or ceramic vs air temp, not ceramic vs skin temp. Your skin is absolutely warmer than a ceramic floor tile.
Tiles do not feel cooler because they “easily lose heat to the air”. They are the same temperature as the other flooring in your house. They feel cooler because of thermal mass, which you’ve identified. Your body can warm the low mass of fabric or wood faster than it can ceramic, thus those materials feel less cold when you step on them.
If you’re going to be pedantic, at least do it right.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I cannot discern the difference between my arguments and yours. You just used more words? We’re saying the same thing, except I was making a joke about pedantry.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
You’re correctly identifying thermal mass as why they feel cooler to the touch, but this is mixed up in some incorrect and contradictory statements.
This is incorrect. Flooring is literally colder, unless your floor temp is above 92℉ (33.5℃). You can measure this with a thermometer. If something is the same temperature as your skin you won’t feel anything - there’s no heat transfer. You could have a copper floor if it was the same temperature as your skin, you wouldn’t feel a thing.
These two statements are directly contradicting one another. High thermal mass means it has a harder time losing heat to the air. Given identical conditions, ceramic will take longer to change temperature than fabric. The reason fabric feels less cold is because you can easily change the temperature of it, due to its low thermal mass.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Who do you keep bringing up the quote from the first reply.
They are literally colder than you. But i used the word really colder. The feel colder because of other phenomenon, which we have covered at length and nothing of note was added. We are making the same point, chill out