How do toasters work???

[TheNinja]

push down the lever and the wires get hot, you get toast!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_FIwX1tb8&feature=player_detailpage#t=40s

All around the country and coast to coast
people always say "what do you like most?"
I don't wanna brag, I don't wanna boast
I always tell'em I like toast.
YA TOAST!
YA TOAST!
I get up in the morning about 6 am
have a lil' jelly, have a lil' jam
take a piece of bread put it in the slot
push down the lever and the wires get hot
I get toast.
YA TOAST!
YA TOAST!
Now there's no secret to toasting perfection
there's a dial on the side and you make your selection
you push to the dark or the light and then
if it pops up too soon, press down again make toast.
YA TOAST!
YUUUUHH TOAST!
When the first caveman drove in from the dregs
he didn't know what would go with the bacon and the eggs
must of been a genius, got it in his head
plug the toaster in the wall buy a bag of bread
and make toast.
YA TOAST!
YUUUUGGH TOAST!
oh oui oui, monseiur bon jour croquette
uh huh croissant tones vous avez
Maurice Chevalier Eiffel tower
oh oui Marie baguettue bon soir.
FRENCH TOAST!
FRENCH TOAST!
In Chicago we're on the Bob and Tom Show.
YA TOAST!
YAUUUUuuuunn ... toast.

 

[chitwood]

push down the lever and the wires get hot, you get toast!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_FIwX1tb8&feature=player_detailpage#t=40s

haaaa! I love that

 

[Oyeve]

ask they dude who patented toast he might know

Steve Jobs?

 

[IronWing]

Steve Jobs?

No. He patented white bread.

 

[waggy]

No. He patented white bread.

that's racist!

 

[sleep]

 

[IronWing]

that's racist!

He's the one who decided all Apple products would be white.

 

[disappoint]

It technically IS a short. Anything less than about 10 ohms is really just a wire.

Technically it is a resistor.

Unless it's superconducting it has some resistance.

 

[Newbian]

Clearly the toaster changes the bread to become better then it ever was before just like in all relationships.

 

[DrPizza]

Wow, how about that. Those are probably the most perfect faces of mica that I've ever seen - it blends in perfectly with the rest of the metal inside the toaster. Okay, now I'm happy - I was wondering all day wtf is going on with my toaster. Now that I've determined that it actually is mica, I can rest easy tonight.

 

[Newbian]

Wow, how about that. Those are probably the most perfect faces of mica that I've ever seen - it blends in perfectly with the rest of the metal inside the toaster. Okay, now I'm happy - I was wondering all day wtf is going on with my toaster. Now that I've determined that it actually is mica, I can rest easy tonight.

Don't believe the lies man, it's clearly tiny gnomes with blowtorches.

 

[lxskllr]

Don't believe the lies man, it's clearly tiny gnomes with blowtorches.

They're in the same union as the ones who turn the light on and off in the fridge.

 

[SlitheryDee]

It sucks cold. When all the cold is gone the remaining heat has nothing to counterbalance it and is able to cook food.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Yeah, I know, resistance, I²R, etc. But, I was just heating up a bagel and thought, "how is it not shorting out?" The nichrome elements are woven in and out through steel (or is it aluminum?) Is there a coating in there that isolates the elements from the rest of the toaster? If so, what is that coating that reliably works (so that I don't get shocked) over such a wide range of temperatures?

edit: Looking inside mine, I'd swear that it's not mica sheets.

i imagine it'd be steel, not aluminum (cost, temperature). the elements glow orange, so you can estimate the temperature from that.

i would, but my math skills are completely failing me right now. i come up with ~20,000K, which is definitely not correct for orange light.

 

[Jeff7]

i imagine it'd be steel, not aluminum (cost, temperature). the elements glow orange, so you can estimate the temperature from that.

i would, but my math skills are completely failing me right now. i come up with ~20,000K, which is definitely not correct for orange light.

And that'd be a problem for quite a lot of materials which wish to remain solid.

 

[IcePickFreak]

I remember the Yeah Toast! song from the early 90s. My radio alarm would usually go off during the middle of that song a local morning show would play at the same time every day. I could do without ever hearing it again.

 

[DrPizza]

i imagine it'd be steel, not aluminum (cost, temperature). the elements glow orange, so you can estimate the temperature from that.

i would, but my math skills are completely failing me right now. i come up with ~20,000K, which is definitely not correct for orange light.

Did you forget that they're radiating a lot of that heat away, plus conduction to the mica?

 

[bobdole369]

Technically it is a resistor.

Unless it's superconducting it has some resistance.

every wire is a resistor.... this is splitting hairs. Anything that conducts enough amps for wires to "glow red" is a short to me...

 

[Jeff7]

every wire is a resistor.... this is splitting hairs. Anything that conducts enough amps for wires to "glow red" is a short to me...

You can make a lot of things glow red if you've got enough voltage to push those amps through.

 

[Farmer]

Did you forget that they're radiating a lot of that heat away, plus conduction to the mica?

In steady state, the net radiation emitted from the wires can be used to describe its temperature. Maybe a way to say that is, nature already accounts for these effects if you turn the toaster on for an appreciable amount of time.

i would, but my math skills are completely failing me right now. i come up with ~20,000K, which is definitely not correct for orange light.

I'd also question the physics of that claim. I'm assuming you are using Wien's displacement law and backing out a temperature from the wavelength associated with orange light? Your math is a little off since I get around 5000K (about the surface temp of the Sun, 20,000K would get you in the UV). This would be correct if you assume that 1.) the object in question is a blackbody and 2.) orange is actually its spectral emissive peak. But 1.) your wire is not a blackbody and 2.) just because the wires appear to glow orange to your eyes does not mean its blackbody peak emission wavelength is exactly orange (or even in the visible, it is most likely in the infrared, as with most commonly occurring things on Earth). Technically you would need some detector that can find the emitted power as a function of wavelength, and scan through the appropriate range of wavelengths. In other words, your eye is not a good detector for characterizing the temperature of a surface via this type of thermal radiation detection.

And I think to respond to the OP, as many have said, It is a "short," per se, since you have current running through a fairly good conductor. You can't have an ideal "short" unless you have a superconductor. But in this case, your application is to generate heat via Joule heating. So you run high current through high effective resistance. What is the problem?

You can approximate any electronic configuration as an ideal linear (i.e., LRC or higher related derivatives) circuit, the correctness of the approximation depending on the situation. In this case, the current flow through any wire can be well approximated by some choice values of R, L, C, or higher derivative terms. In the ideal short would then mean infinite current which means, if the circuit is undriven, it lasts an infinitesimal amount of time, as the potential would equalize immediately, this is the limit of the ideal conductor.

 

[Born2bwire]

every wire is a resistor.... this is splitting hairs. Anything that conducts enough amps for wires to "glow red" is a short to me...

Except it is the resistance that allows it to glow red. If it was a short, then there would be no voltage drop across and no power dissipated as heat. The whole point of using a nichrome wire is that it is highly resistive and thus will dissipate a large amount of heat.

EDIT: To contrast, obviously if we used copper wire instead of the nichrome then there would not be any significant heating effect. So a short is not something that glows red.

 

[slag]

Ok, so how does a microwave brown things? I can put something in a cardboard box with reflective paint and get out a browned hot pocket or browned sandwich. How?

 

[mmntech]

the computer toaster
http://www.crazypc.com/other/misc/toast.htm

Who still uses Pentium IVs?

 

[dawp]

just stay away from talky, the talking toaster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

he's a little bit psycho.

 

[Farmer]

Ok, so how does a microwave brown things? I can put something in a cardboard box with reflective paint and get out a browned hot pocket or browned sandwich. How?

Not sure if serious.