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."

Comments

make aluminum foil burn

[RealBorg]

that's what i have found so far. normally you cannot use aluminum on an induction cooktop, probably because a thick layer of aluminum is equally as conductive as the copper inductor in the cooktop, however a thin layer of aluminum can be brought to hover itself away from the cooktop and / or begin to glow if held in place. my cooktop took no damage from trying this but of course - don't try this at home

Re:make aluminum foil burn

[queazocotal]

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.

Re:make aluminum foil burn

[i.am.delf]

Once upon a time I worked in a metal foundry. There people used induction furnaces to melt all sorts of alloys for castings. Skin depth is key. If you have tiny skin depth in your material it will take forever for something interesting to happen. Step 1 find an insulating container which will not burn. Glass can work(assuming your metal melts before the glass does) or ceramic is better. Place fun things in it like steel wool. Turn on the coil. Be astounded by steel wool. Aluminum cans are thin enough to melt, but be cautious they can ignite in air and if they do you can be poisoned or otherwise injured by the alumina.

I think it might be fun to use a thin metal implement in a glass bowl to cook something from a hot rod.

Induction Heating of Block Ice = Glowing Red Hot I

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember seeing induction heating used to make a block of ice glow red hot.

http://videosift.com/video/Induction-Heating-of-Block-Ice-Glowing-Red-Hot-Ice

Apparently it heats the trace amounts iron inside the ice so this only works with tap water. Not really sure if it would work with an iduction stove top though. Worth a try.

remote iPhone volume control

[guorbatschow]

Last time I used my induction stove to cook water for noodles, I put the power to max, all the while listening to music on my iphone via headphones. You know, those standard apple headphones with microphone and volume controls. Right when I put the power to max, the music went off. Turns out the volume was set to minimum. So I tried to restore the volume via touch controls, but it went to minimum immediately, again. I already had experience with malfunctioning apple headphones (cable short-circuit) so I unplugged them, which helped. Then I noticed that the proximity to the cooktop had an effect. Apparently the induction pattern induced the same signal in the headphone cables that a volume down would produce...

Anybody with a Bosch induction stove and an iPhone/iPod should try to confirm this.

Re:remote iPhone volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

In truth it was the AI in the stove commenting on your taste in music. Try it without the Celine Dion next time.

Re:Lightbulb

[Dr Caleb]

Tanenbaum would have said "Holy fuck! A talking Linux!"

Re:Lightbulb

[tophermeyer]

Can we just go ahead and get a "-1, Goatse" mod option?

Re:water balloon

[queazocotal]

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

Re:Lightbulb

[geekoid]

2 things:
1) Asking is how you find a place to start. When I want to create with electronics, I don't do mine copper.

2) Presuming you meant Linus, he asked several people about how to create a kernel. He was taught a foundation of computer science.

Do you think Linus that created a kernel with no knowledge? having never asked an computer science questions?

Re:Induction Heating of Block Ice = Glowing Red Ho

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a triangular piece of metal in the ice. It's a demonstration by Huettinger, a manufacturer of induction heaters.

http://www.huettinger.com/en/about-us/multimedia.html

I think water would flash to steam before you got it to glow. Unless it was under enormous pressure I suppose.

Re:Try whatever you got in the house.

[Dogtanian]

unexploded WW2 shells, some walmart bullets, a kid with braces. An arm with a tattoo. A hamster that ingested iron shavings.

Raindrops on roses. Whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles. Warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings.