Why does the same query run faster the second time I run it?
What you are experiencing is called caching. The database doesn't have to go to disk the 2nd time because it can either get the data from its own buffer cache, or the operating system/disk array can also provide the data faster from its own cache. 

In order to see whether Oracle fetched the data from disk, or used its cache you can enable autotrace in SQL Developer.

You'll get something like the following:

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
      1  recursive calls
      0  db block gets
      3  consistent gets
      0  physical reads
      0  redo size
    538  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
    543  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
      2  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
      0  sorts (memory)
      0  sorts (disk)
      1  rows processed


Physical reads are pulled from disk.

Another factor that makes the initial query slower is the fact that Oracle has to hard parse a query the first time it sees it - this involves finding the optimum (as far as the Oracle optimiser is concerned) execution plan for the query &amp; is quite computationally (CPU) expensive, thus takes time.