Dozens of public housing apartments will get plug-in induction ranges as part of the initiative, which aims to eventually shift 10,000 NYCHA homes off the use of polluting fossil fuel appliances.
I’ve removed this post due to misinformation. Copper and aluminum pots on an induction stove arent forbidden; they just don’t get hot on an induction stove.
A photo I suggest taking a look at: induction heater burning aluminum foil. Taken from the publication “Practical Course on School Experiments for Future Physics teachers”.
…as for thick aluminum cookware, or copper cookware, I was not implying that they would overheat themselves, I was implying that the induction cooker would overheat its coil attempting to work with them, because they conduct current better than the coil. But perhaps that’s prevented by protection circuits or a process I haven’t taken into account. I can’t test since I don’t have an induction cooker at home.
EM-fields induce current in copper and aluminum perfectly fine, no ferromagnetism is needed. You can build a coreless transformer for example, ordinary tranformers simply benefit from having a core (the core is separated into thin layers to reduce heating). Copper and aluminum simply conduct current very well, so appreciable heat does not appear at everyday levels of field strength and current. Steel and cast iron, having considerable resistance, heat up in a similar field, conducting similar amounts of current. There’s a potential gap in my understanding of the process, however - perhaps I’m failing to take into account the frequency of a cooking field in an induction cooker. The frequency determines whether current wants to travel in the depth of the conductor or on the surface of the conductor.
Simple experiments that I can recommend:
take a circuar magnet and let it drop along a copper pipe -> you will observe that it drops slowly, braking itself by inducing current in copper
spin a rotor with magnets next to a plate of copper -> you will observe mechanical resistance to spinning, because it induces current in copper
For example, a nearby conductive surface will exert a drag force on a moving magnet that opposes its motion, due to eddy currents induced in the surface by the moving magnetic field. This effect is employed in eddy current brakes which are used to stop rotating power tools quickly when they are turned off. The current flowing through the resistance of the conductor also dissipates energy as heat in the material. Thus eddy currents are a cause of energy loss in alternating current (AC) inductors, transformers, electric motors and generators, and other AC machinery, requiring special construction such as laminated magnetic cores or ferrite cores to minimize them. Eddy currents are also used to heat objects in induction heating furnaces and equipment, and to detect cracks and flaws in metal parts using eddy-current testing instruments.
I also recommend this source and will quote them below:
Induction heating utilizes electromagnetic fields to heat conductive materials without any direct contact. Aluminum, although non-magnetic, heats effectively because of its high electrical conductivity. However, it produces weaker eddy currents in comparison to ferrous metals.
This stuff would matter if induction stoves just had a raw component and no cooling or temperatue sensor or pot presence sensor. They’re an engineered product which doesn’t fail in the same way that the raw components do without any of that.
After thinking about this for a while… I can’t say I agree with that.
Sensors can fail. Some companies may even produce sub-standard sensors or faulty logic. I think it’s OK to tell people that copper and aluminum aren’t allowed on an induction top, and the makers of induction tops seem to think similarly, they just add a sentence “unless equipped with a magnetic base”.
Let’s take a manual of a randomly chosen induction cooker:
Cookware made from the following materials is not suitable: pure stainless steel, aluminum or
copper without a magnetic base, glass, wood, porcelain, ceramic, and earthenware
On one hand, an aluminum pot won’t heat. On the other hand, aluminum foil will melt, or if placed somewhat closer, catch fire. I think I should be allowed to claim that “aluminum is forbidden” on induction tops and add that “aluminum foil is extra forbidden”.
Will you kindly restore my post? People can downvote or argue it if they don’t like my interpretation, but I don’t think it’s misinformation. It explains some things they might not even know about. I would be sad if people think that ferromagnetism is required for induction heating to happen. It would be nice if people understood how their cooker accomplishes heating in more depth than “if a magnet sticks, it’s OK”.
That manual entry is different from the danger case; it’s just telling you that the stove won’t do anything, which is what ones I’ve actually encountered do: they have a sensor which detects a non-ferromagnetic material, and keeps the stove from activating.
Sure stuff can fail. But designed right, it means that the stove breaks, not that it puts people in danger.
Then you should also remove my post about it being possible to blow out a wall with a gas stove. It might also scare people. It’s here, I kindly request that you review it:
The key difference is this: gas explosions happen fairly regularly, and require training to prevent even some of them. Some sort of stove-melts disaster is something that doesn’t seem to actually happen that I can tell.
I’ve removed this post due to misinformation. Copper and aluminum pots on an induction stove arent forbidden; they just don’t get hot on an induction stove.
Thanks for correcting.
There seems to be contradictory information on the subject.
Aluminum foil is proven to melt on induction cookers (see attached photo). But that’s because foil is thin.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foil_on_induction_cooktop.jpg
A photo I suggest taking a look at: induction heater burning aluminum foil. Taken from the publication “Practical Course on School Experiments for Future Physics teachers”.
…as for thick aluminum cookware, or copper cookware, I was not implying that they would overheat themselves, I was implying that the induction cooker would overheat its coil attempting to work with them, because they conduct current better than the coil. But perhaps that’s prevented by protection circuits or a process I haven’t taken into account. I can’t test since I don’t have an induction cooker at home.
EM-fields induce current in copper and aluminum perfectly fine, no ferromagnetism is needed. You can build a coreless transformer for example, ordinary tranformers simply benefit from having a core (the core is separated into thin layers to reduce heating). Copper and aluminum simply conduct current very well, so appreciable heat does not appear at everyday levels of field strength and current. Steel and cast iron, having considerable resistance, heat up in a similar field, conducting similar amounts of current. There’s a potential gap in my understanding of the process, however - perhaps I’m failing to take into account the frequency of a cooking field in an induction cooker. The frequency determines whether current wants to travel in the depth of the conductor or on the surface of the conductor.
Simple experiments that I can recommend:
take a circuar magnet and let it drop along a copper pipe -> you will observe that it drops slowly, braking itself by inducing current in copper
spin a rotor with magnets next to a plate of copper -> you will observe mechanical resistance to spinning, because it induces current in copper
I can also recommend an interesting Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current
Quoting from the article (emphasis mine):
I also recommend this source and will quote them below:
This stuff would matter if induction stoves just had a raw component and no cooling or temperatue sensor or pot presence sensor. They’re an engineered product which doesn’t fail in the same way that the raw components do without any of that.
After thinking about this for a while… I can’t say I agree with that.
Sensors can fail. Some companies may even produce sub-standard sensors or faulty logic. I think it’s OK to tell people that copper and aluminum aren’t allowed on an induction top, and the makers of induction tops seem to think similarly, they just add a sentence “unless equipped with a magnetic base”.
Let’s take a manual of a randomly chosen induction cooker:
https://www.caple.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C850I-Instruction-manual-May-2017.pdf
Let’s examine what it says:
On one hand, an aluminum pot won’t heat. On the other hand, aluminum foil will melt, or if placed somewhat closer, catch fire. I think I should be allowed to claim that “aluminum is forbidden” on induction tops and add that “aluminum foil is extra forbidden”.
Will you kindly restore my post? People can downvote or argue it if they don’t like my interpretation, but I don’t think it’s misinformation. It explains some things they might not even know about. I would be sad if people think that ferromagnetism is required for induction heating to happen. It would be nice if people understood how their cooker accomplishes heating in more depth than “if a magnet sticks, it’s OK”.
That manual entry is different from the danger case; it’s just telling you that the stove won’t do anything, which is what ones I’ve actually encountered do: they have a sensor which detects a non-ferromagnetic material, and keeps the stove from activating.
Sure stuff can fail. But designed right, it means that the stove breaks, not that it puts people in danger.
This is a bunch of scaremongering.
Then you should also remove my post about it being possible to blow out a wall with a gas stove. It might also scare people. It’s here, I kindly request that you review it:
https://slrpnk.net/comment/19887409
Moderation practises should be consistent, in my opinion.
The key difference is this: gas explosions happen fairly regularly, and require training to prevent even some of them. Some sort of stove-melts disaster is something that doesn’t seem to actually happen that I can tell.
True.