Seems like common sense, I know. However I thought I'd just share my little accident. Hopefully this will present some interesting insight as to what happens when you do such a thing.
In my kitchen, I have a Miele induction cooktop with touch controls. Whilst making some banana muffins, I used my laptop to display the recipe online. Now, the most convenient, central place to put my laptop is on the glass cooktop, and since I wasn't using it, I didn't think twice about what might happen. Unfortunately, a carton of milk thought otherwise, and when I placed it on top of the touch controls, guess what happened? It switched the appliance on and switched one of the cooking surfaces on to full power. Instantly, my ultrabook screen had a seizure (or at least would have probably given one to anyone susceptible). For about 20 minutes, the screen was a black and white fuzz, much like the static display of background radiation on old analog TVs. However, in the background, parts of the desktop were still there, as I could hardly make out the taskbar, start button, Cortana and some icons. Also present were a few unusual items, including two horizontal lines of odd characters (probably just artifacted words) in bright colours across the display. Also, the fan stopped running for about the same amount of time.
Now, I am going to explain a little bit of how induction cooktops work, and it's a more or less simplified version to my understanding. Sorry for anyone who already knows. Basically, when you switch a cooking surface on, the appliance doesn't create heat (at least not primarily - it's a little side affect but it doesn't matter), instead, it creates a changing magnetic field directly above it. Now, one of the laws of physics (Faraday's law of induction) basically means that if you change the magnetic field strength passing through a conductor, electricity (called "Eddy currents") are induced in the conductor. The faster you change the strength of this magnetic field, the more eddy currents are induced. So in an induction cooktop, full power on a cooking surface means a faster rate of change of magnetic field strength (I know it's actually magnetic flux, but as I said it's a simplified version). If you place, say, an iron pot above this surface, the induced electricity would create a lot of heat in the pot due to the high resistivity of iron. Copper or aluminium, on the other hand, would not create much heat. But a laptop? Well, I'm going to leave some of that explaining up to other people on this forum.
I cannot explain the display problems - I have no idea how LED displays work (if anyone's interested, it's a 12.5" IPS Touchscreen). However, the fan is quite a simple one. Fans, like most rotating electric appliances, use electric motors to operate, and these motors usually involve the use of electromagnets. Get big surge of magnetism from outside of these electromagnets? The fan does unexpected things; in my case, thankfully it just stopped for a little while.
After about 30 minutes of me trying to get the battery out of my ultrabook (it's behind the back cover, and the power button wasn't working whilst it was having its seizure), the Windows 10 lock screen miraculously displayed. The screen was very fuzzy, and having a few artifacting problems, but I was otherwise everything seemed to work just fine. The first thing I did was shut the damn thing down, since my effort to disconnect the battery had failed. I left it for a few minutes, and restarted it, and this time the fuzziness was a little better and the artifacting had gone. I left it on for 10 minutes or so and the display slowly improved. It's been off for about 2 hours now, and turning it back on I can't notice anything wrong - it has successfully gone back to normal. I've checked device manager and nothing seems to be malfunctioning.
This isn't really a cry for help or a query of any kind, I'm just opening up discussion and comment on what I've seen here. Sorry I don't have a screenshot, it didn't come to mind until I started writing this post.
Laptop specs:
Toshiba Satellite U920t Tablet/ Ultrabook Hybrid
Intel® Core i5 3317U
Intel® HD Graphics 4000
8GB DDR3 Memory
256GB SSD (mSATA)
12.5" HD IPS LED Backlit Capacitive Touchscreen Display (1366 x 768)
In my kitchen, I have a Miele induction cooktop with touch controls. Whilst making some banana muffins, I used my laptop to display the recipe online. Now, the most convenient, central place to put my laptop is on the glass cooktop, and since I wasn't using it, I didn't think twice about what might happen. Unfortunately, a carton of milk thought otherwise, and when I placed it on top of the touch controls, guess what happened? It switched the appliance on and switched one of the cooking surfaces on to full power. Instantly, my ultrabook screen had a seizure (or at least would have probably given one to anyone susceptible). For about 20 minutes, the screen was a black and white fuzz, much like the static display of background radiation on old analog TVs. However, in the background, parts of the desktop were still there, as I could hardly make out the taskbar, start button, Cortana and some icons. Also present were a few unusual items, including two horizontal lines of odd characters (probably just artifacted words) in bright colours across the display. Also, the fan stopped running for about the same amount of time.
Now, I am going to explain a little bit of how induction cooktops work, and it's a more or less simplified version to my understanding. Sorry for anyone who already knows. Basically, when you switch a cooking surface on, the appliance doesn't create heat (at least not primarily - it's a little side affect but it doesn't matter), instead, it creates a changing magnetic field directly above it. Now, one of the laws of physics (Faraday's law of induction) basically means that if you change the magnetic field strength passing through a conductor, electricity (called "Eddy currents") are induced in the conductor. The faster you change the strength of this magnetic field, the more eddy currents are induced. So in an induction cooktop, full power on a cooking surface means a faster rate of change of magnetic field strength (I know it's actually magnetic flux, but as I said it's a simplified version). If you place, say, an iron pot above this surface, the induced electricity would create a lot of heat in the pot due to the high resistivity of iron. Copper or aluminium, on the other hand, would not create much heat. But a laptop? Well, I'm going to leave some of that explaining up to other people on this forum.
I cannot explain the display problems - I have no idea how LED displays work (if anyone's interested, it's a 12.5" IPS Touchscreen). However, the fan is quite a simple one. Fans, like most rotating electric appliances, use electric motors to operate, and these motors usually involve the use of electromagnets. Get big surge of magnetism from outside of these electromagnets? The fan does unexpected things; in my case, thankfully it just stopped for a little while.
After about 30 minutes of me trying to get the battery out of my ultrabook (it's behind the back cover, and the power button wasn't working whilst it was having its seizure), the Windows 10 lock screen miraculously displayed. The screen was very fuzzy, and having a few artifacting problems, but I was otherwise everything seemed to work just fine. The first thing I did was shut the damn thing down, since my effort to disconnect the battery had failed. I left it for a few minutes, and restarted it, and this time the fuzziness was a little better and the artifacting had gone. I left it on for 10 minutes or so and the display slowly improved. It's been off for about 2 hours now, and turning it back on I can't notice anything wrong - it has successfully gone back to normal. I've checked device manager and nothing seems to be malfunctioning.
This isn't really a cry for help or a query of any kind, I'm just opening up discussion and comment on what I've seen here. Sorry I don't have a screenshot, it didn't come to mind until I started writing this post.
Laptop specs:
Toshiba Satellite U920t Tablet/ Ultrabook Hybrid
Intel® Core i5 3317U
Intel® HD Graphics 4000
8GB DDR3 Memory
256GB SSD (mSATA)
12.5" HD IPS LED Backlit Capacitive Touchscreen Display (1366 x 768)
Facebook
Twitter