Why am I colder when I'm wet than when I'm dry?

Question

We've all had this scenario. You're naked in your bathroom. You feel cold, but you're dry. After you've taken a bath, you're dripping wet, and you feel 10x colder than before you got into the shower. Why is that?

Answer 1

It's the same after swimming at the beach on a hot day.



As you're drying, the evaporation of the water from your skin is removing heat energy from the skin for the evaporation (not vaporisation) process.

You can actually shiver with cold during this process.....more so if it's breezy, because the evaporation rate is increased..

Answer 2

We've all had this scenario. You're naked in your bathroom. You feel cold, but you're dry. After you've taken a bath, you're dripping wet, and you feel 10x colder than before you got into the shower. Why is that?

Because when you are wet, water vapourises from the wet body taking latent heat from the body hence body feels colder.

When you are dry, no evaporation, so no cold is felt.

Answer 3

It takes energy to evaporate water. The energy is being taken from your skin, so you feel cooler. This is very important in the summer when you sweat, the evaporation cools you.