Why tea is more hot in the cup than the dish?
Vidunenahawula Website (National Institute of Fundamental Studies)
When you are serving hot tea, you may have noticed that some people would pour the tea onto a dish and then drink it. If you kept the same volume of hot tea in a cup and a dish you would notice that temperature of the tea in the dish is lower than the cup. Explain how the tea in the dish is cooler than the tea in the cup.
When you keep the tea in a cup and in a dish it both begins to cool down. This is because there is a temperature difference in the hot tea and the environment. So the heat energy from the tea travels to the environment cooling the tea. The surface area in the dish is higher than that of the cup. When the surface area is high more heat is lost into the environment. So as more heat from the dish is lost to the environment the tea in the dish is much cooler.
