[bryan0]

Are you sure? I believe Newtown's law of cooling says the temperature will drop sharply at the beginning:

dT/dt = -k(T_0 - T_room)

so T(t) = T_room + (T_0 - T_room) exp(-kt)

exp(-x) has a fast drop off then levels off.

[cyberax]

Ha. My university professor used this in a lab to catch people who slack off.

There is another factor here: convection. Its speed depends on the viscosity of the fluid and the temperature difference both. And viscosity itself depends on the temperature, so you get this very sharp dropoff.

[amelius]

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/rc/time-constant.html

scroll down, these graphs just don't look similar.