If you put a toaster in a freezer, which wins?
a month ago by schnurrito to c/xkcd
And not just that, but toasters heat things up a lot more than freezers cool them down.
This kind of comparison always annoys me. Sure the coils are "hotter" but that has absolutely nothing to do with actual energy. Same thing when people bitch "oh my pc is so garbage it runs so hot" when it's some econobox 30w cpu- cool that just means your cooling system is bad or clogged. A machine can be producing 3kW of heat but be at 40C, or 3 watts at 150C.
It doesn't matter that a freezer runs at - 20c and a toaster at 700c. If watts in = watts out it'll stay cold, and if it doesn't, the system will warm up.
The question in the video is not the one in the title. It asked "Would a toaster still work in a freezer?", and the chart was used to show that bread would still be toasted if it is in the freezer while toasting.
So the other commenter equated two different analyses. This chart is useful in context of the question above.
Yea, people need to stop comparing temperatures and start comparing energy. My car produces ~125kW of waste heat at max load and stay at ~105C whereas my oven is limited to ~4kW and can reach 500C because it is insulated while my car has a massive cooling system.
I'm still trying to figure out why you would drill a whole in your fridge to put a toaster in it. Waste of a good seal to get the cord out I imagine. Unless you can get the wattage from the ice machine hookup
From what I've read (which was when I was seeing how feasible it is to run a fridge-freezer on a battery backup (Ecoflow, Jackery, Bluetti, etc), freezers (or at least fridge-freezers) don't continuously draw even 250W. Most of the time they draw a very small current. But when the compressor kicks in that current spikes right up.
On that topic of running one off a battery backup, the conclusion I came to is that it's feasible as long as the battery has enough capacity to handle those spikes. So like a 1000W battery should be fine. But the battery will still drain quicker than you might think. Using a smaller chest freezer (preferably one that can be converted to/from a freezer and a fridge) is more efficient and will be more bang for your MWh.
The utility company.
Even if the toaster had to work against air close to liquidification temperature, let's say around 82 K. Wouldn't the insulation capability and relatively small heat capacity of air hinder the heat transport away from the toaster enough to make toasting still possible?
Stone/ glass wool is called insulation wool for a reason.
I mean we use convection by fan to mitigate that effect. Ventilation systems use inverters with large fans. Even computer chips are cooled with heat sinks which have small or not so small fans on top.
I guess that's why he mentioned if not windy in one sentence.
Yeah, I think wind is an enormous factor for this. If the toaster's heat is allowed to accumulate over time (i.e. low air movement), it would win no matter how cold the environment is, as long as it can start in the first place (I have no idea if it might fail for some reason).
The rising hot air would create convection, but I am too lazy to look up the numbers for that to see how significant it would be. My lazy and uninformed guess is that it would be significant and slow things down, but not enough to stop the toaster from toasting.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the energy heating the toast is actually infrared light radiating from the coils. This radiation wouldn't be affected at all by the colder environment. But as soon as it turns to heat in the toast, it's just as susceptible to the air currents stealing away the heat.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the energy heating the toast is actually infrared light radiating from the coils. This radiation wouldn't be affected at all by the colder environment. But as soon as it turns to heat in the toast, it's just as susceptible to the air currents stealing away the heat.
You've stumbled upon the real question... Would the toast taste better or worse if you toast at a lower temp?
xkcd covering the McElroys. Now I’ve seen everything.
The original article from 10 years ago is actually how I discovered MBMBAM.
Bath always wins
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The toaster…
Toasters can easily use an entire 120V-12.5A circuit, drawing ~1,500W. It can do this continually.
Freezers draw anywhere from 250-500W while running, and can move about double that in terms of heat energy out of the cavity. However freezers are not designed to run continually and instead operate on a duty cycle.
With both running continually the toaster will outlast the freezer
I haven’t watched the video btw.
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