Why does a hot liquid feel cold for a moment?

Skin that comes in contact with a very hot liquid can sometimes register a cold sensation for just a split second before the heat is felt — what's the cause?

Why does a hot liquid feel cold for a moment?
you are not feeling hot or cold when you feel something either very hot or very cold. What you feel is burning.





Burning can occure if you touch something very hot (the metal on a lighter, a hot plate, pan that has been on the burner), or if you touch something very cold (snow on a very cold day [-20F or so], or the best example, dry ice)





In this case the feeling that you are getting is the lack of responce of cells in you skin. This is being cause by the death of those cells, it creates a unique cell responce (actualy the cell responce can be duplicated by certin protiens that are found is some peppers [hot peppers])





and because burning can be cause by hot or cold your body does not know which it is untill the rest of the skin around it either heat up or cools down, and this happens a couple seconds later.





It is a very neat thing that you body does. The knowlege that your nervous system gives you about weather something is hot or cold takes a lot longer to register than to get the instinctual reaction of weather something is burning or hurting you .
Reply:I am interested in the feel burning as the loss of moisture from the skin... can any one cite a source on that ??? Report It

Reply:we do not register hot and cold actually. our nerve system registers pain to certain degree and it is so acute that we can differentiate hot and cold. the cold sensation that you feel is the sharp pain that happens when our normal temperature skin comes in contact with the hot substance. its about the same feeling when our skin accidentally hits something sharp, juz that we register the hot substance as, well, hot.
Reply:Both (hot and cold) have the effect of removing moisture from the skin.





This is what is felt first. The receptors responsible for feeling hot or cold are slightly deeper into the dermis.
Reply:I have noticed this too. I do not know the exact neurscience behind how temparature is sensed but would guess that there are two forms of nerves used and one is susceptable to general temparature changes (registering the cold sensation) and a more sensative and specific kind which is less near the dermal layer (as usual in organisms the most sensative parts not nessecary for immediate data is more well pretected) and thus have to wait a momement before they detect the nature of the change.


An althernative is that the nerves can detect a surface change in temparature but it is not until (a moment later) the thermal change has altered the tissue's own temparature that the nature and magnitude of the change is discerned.


I hope this answer seems plausable - as I mentioned this is just an assumation based upon observation not neuroscience.