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Fun With an Induction Cooktop?
fishfrys writes "Besides generating heat quickly and efficiently in ferromagnetic pans, what sorts of fun things can you do with an induction cooktop? This seems like a pretty serious piece of electromagnetic equipment — boiling water can't be the only thing it's good for. I went to YouTube, expecting to find all sorts of crazy videos of unsafe induction cooktop shenanigans, but found only cooking. What sort of exciting, if not stupid, physics experiments can be performed with one? Hard drive scrubber? DIY Tesla coil? There's got to be something."
Can we just go ahead and get a "-1, Goatse" mod option?
For much the same reason - 'magnetic stainless' is typically said to be OK for induction cooking, and 'non-magnetic' not.
This is due to the 'skin depth' (look at wikipedia) being thinner in magnetic materials.
This means that in both steel and iron pans, which are magnetic, in addition to the high resistance of the pan material, the electricity doesn't go very deeply, so it's only passing through a thin skin of the pan.
However - with very thin containers, non-magnetic stainless works just fine.
I regularly heat up a large (non-magnetic) stainless washing up bowl that's maybe 0.5mm thick on my induction cooker.
Any thicker and it doesn't work.
My favourite utensil to use with it is actually a cheap 0.8mm or so thick steel wok.
Heats up in seconds, and once seasoned, is quite non-stick.
My second favourite is a large steel plate 6mm thick, again seasoned.
Not really.
There is no 'safety mechanism' as such that stops it heating hands.
The coil can safely be energised with no load.
It won't get too hot, or anything, and it won't noticably heat your hand, or a duck, or anything non-metallic.
(well, it would heat graphite blocks and such, but that's cheating).
The reason for the device not turning on with no load is to prevent it heating up forks and other metallic implements that have been placed on the surface.
www.st.com/stonline/books/pdf/docs/12443.pdf