Over-tuned Tea Kettle
Mar. 5th, 2021 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqWe have an electric tea kettle that I think may straddle the line between being a fine-tuned bit of technology and a slightly over-tuned piece of technology.
As one might expect from a tea kettle, it is extremely basic to use; you fill it to the level you want, put it on its base and press down the activation switch. Shortly after the water starts boiling, the kettle shuts itself off. I don' need to take the kettle apart to make an educated guess that it's mechanically driven by a bimetallic strip.
The only other user-accessible moving parts on it are the lid (hinged), and two spring-loaded retractable clips that hold the lid in place when it's closed. These clips are where the issue of tuning arises.
99% of the time, when you snap the lid closed, it stays closed. The other 1%, one side or the other does not entirely catch, and the lid can pop up slightly on that side. One might think this would make no difference, other than upping the small risk of weather splashing out if the kettle is filled to capacity and boiling vigorously.
But it actually prevents the auto-stop feature from working.
The tiny amount of evaporative cooling from having the lid improperly seated is enough to keep the bimetallic strip from tripping. I have never left it long enough to test my hypothesis, but I suspect that the kettle would merrily boil itself dry in this situation.
Presumably, it would get hot enough to shut itself off once the water was all gone, but it's an annoying little glitch. It really makes me appreciate the intricate engineering that goes into designing something as ostensibly simple as a tea kettle.
That an almost imperceptible gap in the lid is enough to upset the delicate balance and make the kettle malfunction is ... interesting. It's the kind of engineering quirk that I try not to think about when driving across a large bridge.
As one might expect from a tea kettle, it is extremely basic to use; you fill it to the level you want, put it on its base and press down the activation switch. Shortly after the water starts boiling, the kettle shuts itself off. I don' need to take the kettle apart to make an educated guess that it's mechanically driven by a bimetallic strip.
The only other user-accessible moving parts on it are the lid (hinged), and two spring-loaded retractable clips that hold the lid in place when it's closed. These clips are where the issue of tuning arises.
99% of the time, when you snap the lid closed, it stays closed. The other 1%, one side or the other does not entirely catch, and the lid can pop up slightly on that side. One might think this would make no difference, other than upping the small risk of weather splashing out if the kettle is filled to capacity and boiling vigorously.
But it actually prevents the auto-stop feature from working.
The tiny amount of evaporative cooling from having the lid improperly seated is enough to keep the bimetallic strip from tripping. I have never left it long enough to test my hypothesis, but I suspect that the kettle would merrily boil itself dry in this situation.
Presumably, it would get hot enough to shut itself off once the water was all gone, but it's an annoying little glitch. It really makes me appreciate the intricate engineering that goes into designing something as ostensibly simple as a tea kettle.
That an almost imperceptible gap in the lid is enough to upset the delicate balance and make the kettle malfunction is ... interesting. It's the kind of engineering quirk that I try not to think about when driving across a large bridge.
