Why does metal feel colder than wood?

Touch a steel spoon and a wooden spoon on the same table. The steel feels cold, the wood feels normal. Yet both are exactly the same temperature — room temperature.

Your skin does not measure temperature. It measures how fast heat leaves your hand.

Metal is a good conductor: it carries heat away from your fingers very quickly, so your skin cools and your brain says ‘cold’. Wood is a poor conductor — an insulator — so the heat stays in your hand and nothing feels cold.

The same trick works the other way. On a hot day, a metal bench feels burning while a wooden one feels fine, because the metal pushes heat into you just as fast.