You can get a visceral understanding of high degrees of heat. You just need real-life experience with it. I’ve done some metalworking, a lot of which is delicate control of high temperatures. By looking at the black-body glow of the metal you’re working with, you can grok how hot it is. I know that annealing brass (just barely pink) is substantially cooler than melting silver solder (well into the red), or that steel gets soft (orange) well before it melts (white hot). I don’t know the actual numerical values of any of those.
I still have no feeling for temperatures between boiling water and the onset of glowing, though, so I don’t know whether cooking phenolic resin is hotter or colder than melting lead. Both of them are hotter than boiling water, but not hot enough to glow.
You can get a visceral understanding of high degrees of heat. You just need real-life experience with it. I’ve done some metalworking, a lot of which is delicate control of high temperatures. By looking at the black-body glow of the metal you’re working with, you can grok how hot it is. I know that annealing brass (just barely pink) is substantially cooler than melting silver solder (well into the red), or that steel gets soft (orange) well before it melts (white hot). I don’t know the actual numerical values of any of those.
I still have no feeling for temperatures between boiling water and the onset of glowing, though, so I don’t know whether cooking phenolic resin is hotter or colder than melting lead. Both of them are hotter than boiling water, but not hot enough to glow.