Making Heat From Electricity

They work by converting electricity into heat using metals as heating elements.
The
metals have high resistance that permit a certain amount of current to flow though
them to provide the required heat. Electrical energy is changed into heat energy and
:the the relationship between the wattage and Btu/hr is
Making heat from electricity

In school we learn that some materials carry electricity well, others badly.
The good carriers of electricity are called conductors, while the poor
carriers are known asinsulators. Conductors and insulators are often better
described by talking about how much resistance they put up when an
electric current flows through them. So conductors have a low resistance
(electricity flows through them easily) while insulators have a much higher
resistance (it's a real struggle for the electricity to get through). In an electric
or electronic circuit, we can use devices called resistors to control how
much current flows; using a dial to increase the resistance and lower the
current in aloudspeaker circuit is a way of turning down the volume, for
example.
Resistors work by converting electrical energy to heat energy; in other

words, they get hot when electricity flows through them. But it's not just
resistors that do this. Even a thin piece of wire will get hot if you force
enough electricity through it. That's the basic idea behind incandescent
lamps (old-fashioned, bulb-shaped lights). Inside the glass bulb, there's a

very thin coil of wire called a filament. When enough electricity flows
through it, it glows white hot, very brightlyso it's really making light by
making heat. Around 95 percent of the energy a lamp like this uses is
turned into heat and completely wasted (using an energy-saving fluorescent
lamp is far more efficient, because most of the electricity the lamp
consumes is converted into light with hardly any wasted heat).
Photo: A closeup of the coiled tungsten filament in an incandescent lamp, which makes light by making a
great deal of heat. The amount of light a filament produces is directly related to how long it is: the longer the
filament, the more light it gives off. That's why it's coiled: a coil packs more length (and light) into the same
space.
Now forget the lightwhat if the heat were the thing we were really
interested in? Suddenly, we find our wasteful incandescent lamp is actually
very efficient, because it converts 95 percent of the energy we feed into it to
heat. Fantastic! Only there's a problem. If you've ever got close to an
incandescent lamp, you'll know it gets hot enough to burn you if you touch it
(don't be tempted to try). But if you stand even a meter or so away, the heat
from something like a 100-watt lamp is far too feeble to reach you.
?hat is a heating element
A typical heating element is usually a coil, ribbon (straight or corrugated), of

strip of wire that gives off heat much like a lamp filament. When an electric
current flows through it, it glows red hot and converts the electrical energy
.passing through it into heat, which it radiates out in all directions
Heating elements are typically either nickel-based or iron-based. The nickelbased ones are usually nichrome, an alloy (a mixture of metals and
sometimes other chemical elements) that consists of about 80
percent nickel and 20 percent chromium (other compositions of nichrome
are available, but the 8020 mix is the most common). There are various
good reasons why nichrome is the most popular material for heating
elements: it has a high melting point (about 1400C or 2550F), doesn't
oxidize (even at high temperatures), doesn't expand too much when it heats
up, and has a reasonable (not too low, not too high, and reasonably
constant) resistance (it increases only by about 10 percent between room
.temperature and its maximum operating temperature)
Photo: The heating element concealed inside a ceramic cooktop. This is one continuous element, beginning
at the blue dot and curving around in a maze shape until it reaches the red dot. There's no point in this
element being any other shape or size: it has to concentrate heat precisely underneath a cooking panand
.this is the most effective way to achieve that
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They work by converting electricity into heat using metals as heating elements.

Making heat from electricity

Resistors work by converting electrical energy to heat energy; in other

lamps (old-fashioned, bulb-shaped lights). Inside the glass bulb, there's a

?hat is a heating element

A typical heating element is usually a coil, ribbon (straight or corrugated), of

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