Metal vs Wood Spoon: Which One Burns Your Hand? - Video

Hot soup: you leave a spoon in it. Metal or wood, which one burns your hand? The same 95 °C soup in a 26 °C kitchen, two spoons left standing in it, with the heat along each handle simulated and painted on the spoon.

???? METAL

Metal carries heat about a hundred times better than wood, so the heat climbs the handle fast. 2 cm above the soup the metal is at 67 °C, too hot to touch. But the kitchen air takes heat off the handle all the way up, so where your fingers sit, about 12 cm up, it is only 27 °C.

???? WOOD

The heat barely gets into the wooden handle. 2 cm above the soup it is just 27 °C, and from about 1 cm up it is room temperature.

✋ WHY METAL FEELS WORSE

Two handles at the same temperature do not feel the same. Touch both at 45 °C: the metal pours heat into your skin so fast that your skin reaches 43 °C, almost the spoon's own temperature. Wood cannot hand over heat that fast, so your skin only reaches 36 °C.

⚠️ HOW SURE THIS IS

The simulation was checked against the exact answer from a physics textbook before anything was drawn. It was also run in many other kitchens: still air and a breeze, soup from 80 to 100 °C, thin and thick handles, short and long spoons. Every time, the metal handle was too hot to hold for the first 2 to 6 cm, the wooden one for about 1 cm at most, and where you hold the spoon neither was close to painful. One limit: here the spoon stands free in the soup. A spoon resting on the hot rim of the pot, or a very short spoon, puts more heat near your fingers. A plastic spoon behaves almost exactly like the wooden one.

???? THE POINT

Metal is the one that burns, but only near the soup. Hold it high, or use wood.

Metal or wood, which one do you use? Comment below.

Making the invisible visible. ????

#cooking #kitchen #spoon #heat #physics #kitchentips #shorts #science