Why Metal Feels Colder Than Wood at the Same Temperature

A metal table and a wooden table left in the same room for long enough will be at almost the same temperature, yet the metal still feels colder. That is because our sensation of hot and cold depends not only on an object’s temperature, but also on how quickly heat flows.

Your hand is usually warmer than objects at room temperature, so heat moves from your skin into them. Metal conducts that heat away from the contact point quickly, allowing its surface to keep drawing heat from your hand. Wood conducts heat slowly, so the small area you touch warms up and the heat flow soon decreases. Representative NIST values put copper’s thermal conductivity at about 387 W/(m·K) and oak’s at about 0.17 W/(m·K), a difference of more than two thousand times. Exact values vary with the material, its structure and temperature, but the difference in scale is unmistakable.

Feeling colder therefore does not mean being at a lower temperature. If both materials are hotter than your skin, the direction of heat flow reverses: metal feels hotter and can cause injury more quickly. Touch is better understood as sensing how your skin is warming or cooling, not as a replacement for a thermometer.

References
NIST, Fire Dynamics: Heat Transfer
https://www.nist.gov/el/fire-research-division-73300/firegov-fire-service/fire-dynamics
OpenStax, Temperature: Human Perception vs. Reality
https://openstax.org/books/college-physics-2e/pages/13-1-temperature