Stove burners elements

Eigenvector said:

Surprisingly I couldn't find an answer to this one searching Google or the
groups.

Quoted message said:

What are the tempretures of an electric stove burner settings? I'm guessing
that it depends on the stove itself - but there has to be a standard range
(forgive the pun) of values. Something like low=130F Med=150F etc...

No, there isn't really. The burner, without anything on it,
it much hotter than that; conversely, the larger a pan you put
on it, the lower temperature you will achieve.

So there isn't such a thing as "the" temperature of an electric burner
setting.

Steve

Eigenvector said:

Surprisingly I couldn't find an answer to this one searching Google or the
groups.

What are the tempretures of an electric stove burner settings? I'm
guessing that it depends on the stove itself - but there has to be a
standard range (forgive the pun) of values. Something like low=130F
Med=150F etc...

I won't worry about gas ranges, that adds a whole 'nother set of
complexities to this question.

The burner control doesn't control temperature, it controls heat output. The
temperature resulting from any given setting depends what is on the burner.
A pot full of oil on high will just keep getting hotter until the oil
ignites. A pot full of water will never exceed 212F unless all the water
boils away.

There are stove burners, both gas and electric that are thermostatically
controlled. With those burners, you are controlling the temperature rather
than the heat output. Those burners have a sensor that measures the
temperature of the bottom of the pot, and adjusts the heat output to
maintain the temperature you set. This type of burner is pretty rare, and
I've only seen one stove that had one in my life, though I've seen them in
literature. The one I saw was on my parent's Caloric gas stove, which they
got in 1965. Only one of the four burners had this feature.

--
wff_ng_7 (at) verizon (dot) net

"wff_ng_7" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:A5UWh.3927$Fc1.2741@trnddc05...

Quoted message said:

Eigenvector said:

Surprisingly I couldn't find an answer to this one searching Google or
the groups.

What are the tempretures of an electric stove burner settings? I'm
guessing that it depends on the stove itself - but there has to be a
standard range (forgive the pun) of values. Something like low=130F
Med=150F etc...

I won't worry about gas ranges, that adds a whole 'nother set of
complexities to this question.

The burner control doesn't control temperature, it controls heat output.
The temperature resulting from any given setting depends what is on the
burner. A pot full of oil on high will just keep getting hotter until the
oil ignites. A pot full of water will never exceed 212F unless all the
water boils away.

There are stove burners, both gas and electric that are thermostatically
controlled. With those burners, you are controlling the temperature rather
than the heat output. Those burners have a sensor that measures the
temperature of the bottom of the pot, and adjusts the heat output to
maintain the temperature you set. This type of burner is pretty rare, and
I've only seen one stove that had one in my life, though I've seen them in
literature. The one I saw was on my parent's Caloric gas stove, which they
got in 1965. Only one of the four burners had this feature.

--
wff_ng_7 (at) verizon (dot) net

I read you, and understand what you are saying. After all a burner on high
certainly isn't at 212F - glowing red hot, and the small burners on high
can't even compete with the large burners on high.

My understanding, ignorantly so, is that the burner is at X degrees, the
heat is transfered to the pan, which heats the contents up until the
contents reaches the same tempreture as the burner. It takes more or less
time depending upon the contents of the pan and size of the burner - but the
burner is still at X degrees or the stove is consuming Y watts to produce X
degrees.

Anyways I don't want to turn this into a physics experiment, I don't care
that much about it. I just wondered out loud whether or not if I put
something on medium I could expect it to reach X degrees - like chicken or
fish.

Eigenvector said:

My understanding, ignorantly so, is that the burner is at X degrees, the
heat is transfered to the pan, which heats the contents up until the
contents reaches the same tempreture as the burner. It takes more or less
time depending upon the contents of the pan and size of the burner - but the
burner is still at X degrees or the stove is consuming Y watts to produce X
degrees.

Yes, sort of. Most modern burner elements are just straight resistance
heating elements. This means they produce X amount of heat all the time
they are on where X is pretty much a direct function of the watts being
consumed. Resistive heating elements are, for practical purposes, 100%
efficient at turning watts into heat. The size of the pot, its contents,
and how fast the pot and contents can give off that heat will determine
the max temperature you can reach. At some point you reach an equilibrium
where the pot and its contents are losing heat as fast as the element is
adding it. The element by itself with no pot on it will get quite
hot, but also eventually reach an equilibrium or burn out trying.

Now the fun part. The element only has one fixed amount of heat it
produces. The control is a duty cycle controller. It basically turns
the element on and off. On the max setting it leaves the element
on constantly, at the lowest setting the element comes on for maybe
10 seconds out of every minute, and presumably the middle setting is
about half time on and half off.

By the way, older stoves with push buttons and some with click-stop
knobs had multi-element burners that stayed on constantly in various
series and/or parallel configurations to produce actual different
wattage levels, but it's much cheaper to use the basic two wire, one
level element and just vary duty cycle, so you don't really see
these much any more.

Quoted message said:

Anyways I don't want to turn this into a physics experiment, I don't care
that much about it. I just wondered out loud whether or not if I put
something on medium I could expect it to reach X degrees - like chicken or
fish.

Not unless you have a thrmostatically controlled burner. A samll pan will
get hotter than a large pan at the same setting. Water, of course, limits
the temperature to 212F until it all boils off, no matter what size pot.
A large enough pot with water on a small burner may never reach a boil
at the 1/2 setting, or it may just take a long time to reach a boil.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

Eigenvector said:

Surprisingly I couldn't find an answer to this one searching Google or the
groups.

What are the tempretures of an electric stove burner settings? I'm guessing
that it depends on the stove itself - but there has to be a standard range
(forgive the pun) of values. Something like low=130F Med=150F etc...

I won't worry about gas ranges, that adds a whole 'nother set of
complexities to this question.

Would this be of any use to you?

<http://vsack.homepage.t-online.de/rfc_faq0.html#2.6>

Victor