A question for people with plates and pins

[El_Kabong]

I have a plate in my right wrist. A few years ago I had to make a trip to Alaska’s North Slope in February and spent some time outside in temps ranging from -15 to -25 F. About froze my ass off, but didn’t have any specific discomfort from or around the plate.

[Saintly_Loser]

Plenty of screws and plates in one leg. I’ve forgotten how many – the accident that did the damage was 25 years ago. And led to a knee replacement about twenty years ago.

No, that leg doesn’t get any colder than the other. In fact, at this point, I don’t feel any of it at all, in any way.

I can’t predict the weather using that leg, either. Weather makes no difference at all.

ETA: The accident was closer to thirty years ago. Wow, I’m getting old.

[bump]

@eschrodinger

Bolding mine. You know that’s a nonsense explanation, right? All temperature change is heat moving away from the warmer body to the cooler one. There is no such thing as cold moving anywhere as distinct from heat moving away. We may refer to it that way as a kind of poetic license, but there is no “conducting cold inward.”

I do; my point was that it’s unlikely that a screw or any other hardware would be feeling cold because it was colder than the surrounding tissue (somehow) and leaching heat away from it. I mean, something would have to happen that would drop the temperature of the hardware independent from the surrounding tissue, which is kind of hard to imagine.

What I was also saying is that it’s much more likely that it would be the best radiator of heat on that part of your body due to its better thermal conductivity, and as such less likely to feel cold than other parts of your body.

[eschrodinger]

@bump

I do; my point was that it’s unlikely that a screw or any other hardware would be feeling cold because it was colder than the surrounding tissue (somehow) and leaching heat away from it. I mean, something would have to happen that would drop the temperature of the hardware independent from the surrounding tissue, which is kind of hard to imagine.

What I was also saying is that it’s much more likely that it would be the best radiator of heat on that part of your body due to its better thermal conductivity, and as such less likely to feel cold than other parts of your body.

I guess it would depend on where the metal is and where the temperature is being sensed. If you look at, say, pins that run perpendicular to a limb, and the outer flesh is colder than the deeper flesh, then the pins could be conducting heat away from deeper, warmer, flesh (feeling cold) and the outer flesh would conduct heat away from the metal (feeling warm).

It seems to me that specific heat could be involved as well, but I’m not sure of the details. It’s been a while since I took physics and I can’t spend the time to figure it out.

[Napier]

A plate and about 10 screws in my neck – no, they don’t feel cold, they don’t get cold. They have no way to export heat to the world outside of me, as they are completely surrounded by my flesh.

I have all sorts of negative feelings in my neck, but none of them are particularly cold.