Our Jenn-air retails for $2699, which is pretty average. You can’t really compare it to a regular electric top–the real comparison would be a top-of-the-line gas top. Even then, burners max out around 22,000 BTU which would be not even close to the power of an induction top.
I would think these would be ideal for senior living facilities. Most fires in these sorts of places are because of burners left on, although induction won’t help if the pan of oil is left on the burner. My niece has an induction stove and her husband, an accomplished cook, loves it.
A factual column rather than a political opinion column? Hello, National Weather Service, has Hell frozen over?
My brother bought this gizmo (or the equivalent) and added it to the burner knobs of my mother’s stove. It periodically makes noise and flashes when the burner is in use.
Thanks. I’m going to bring that to the attention of building management. There are people here who are in varying stages of forgetfulness, and I’ve been known to leave a burner on at times myself.
Oops, looks like these are for gas burners. All stoves here are electric.
No, I’m pretty sure that thing works on electric stoves. I know that my mother has an electric stove and she has something like that.
Because the eddy currents go in circles.
To get a shock, you need to complete a circuit in some way, with some part at a high voltage and another at a lower voltage. Stick a fork in an outlet and grab a faucet with the other hand (please don’t), and you complete a circuit with one hand at 120 volts and the other at ground.
But the eddy currents form a closed loop. There’s no part of it at a higher voltage than the other; the electromagnetic field is driving the current flow, not the fact that electrons are trying to go from a high voltage to a low one.
A slightly different way of looking at it is that the electromagnetic field is inducing a voltage on each part of the loop, but the Joule heating causes a voltage drop (since each little section of the pan acts as an electrical resistor). Those two voltages exactly cancel out, leading to a net voltage of zero around every eddy loop. No volts, no shock.
Thank you very much. I assume it follows from that that if you put a voltmeter across a metal pan on an induction hob, it will read (near enough) 0, whereas if you somehow connected a metal pan directly to the mains the voltmeter would read 120v?
BTW, another place eddy currents intersect with everyday life is the detectors under the road that let traffic lights know there’s a car there. The detectors are basically a loop of wire with an electric current running through it. The current, of course, generates a magnetic field. If a large chunk of ferromagnetic material gets close, an eddy current is generated in the chunk and that generates its own magnetic field. Which changes the current in the loop, thus generating a signal to the lights. No significant heating is happening, because the current is a lot smaller than an induction stove.
It is even more responsive than gas, and uses less electricity than electric. And having been in professional kitchens you’ll appreciate: It heats the pan, not the kitchen.
Honestly, the biggest learning curve for me has been that “high” is a whole lot higher than I am accustomed to. I am not going to get the nice long sit-down I am used to while waiting for the spaghetti pot to boil. I’m not a steak girl, but I’m guessing you could get the sear of your dreams with one of these.
It’s important to know how your particular one manages “low” settings. Some pulse on and off at the highest setting, like a microwave. The more expensive ones do have an actual constant/lower energy configuration. I got a bit nervous the first time I saw my oatmeal “breathing.” 
Overall it’s my absolute favorite, hands down. Now if they can just find a way to make it work with a wok!
I’ve heard they’re no good for canning. Anybody know about that? – I think the issue was something about the weight of the pots; or, considering some of the above, maybe about not holding a constant boil?
– oh. I just did about five minutes of my own research. Multiple potential issues: most hot water bath canners won’t work because the bottoms are ridged (they are on mine); most pressure canners won’t work because they’re aluminum (as is mine); many canners won’t work because they’re a bit wider than the burner and the rest of the stove top isn’t designed to stand the heat; some induction stoves aren’t designed to stand up to the weight; and the induction cooktop may turn off entirely if it thinks there’s been too much heat buildup for too long.
So apparently a) I’d need to get two very expensive new pots, and hope that even if I spent enough money I could find ones that would both work and fit on the burners b) probably only some induction stoves are designed for the weight c) heat adjustment would need to be precise, not only for the pressure canner where it’s necessary anyway, but also for the hot water bath in order to keep a good rolling boil without excessive heat buildup (and I’m not sure some stoves wouldn’t be unhappy about it anyway.)
Of course, not everybody wants to use their stove for home canning anyway.
It gets complicated, but basically yes.
As I mentioned, the eddy loops will have the same voltage all around the loop, but in principle the pan as a whole could be at any voltage. Rub a cat on your cookware and it might go up to thousands of volts via static electricity, but it can’t give you a serious shock–the eddy currents can’t break their loop and go through your body.
If you connect your pan directly to the mains, it’ll show 120v vs. ground. If you’re standing on an insulating surface and don’t touch anything else, you could touch the pan without getting a shock. But as soon as there’s a path from the 120v to some ground–the other part of the outlet, or even the faucet (since the pipes literally go into the ground), there’s a danger.
There’s a device used to reduce this danger, called a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupt). New electrical code requires it in some places (including kitchens). If it senses a current loop that doesn’t go from the outlet back into itself, it shuts off. You’ll still get shocked if you complete the circuit by poking a fork into the neutral pin socket to complete the loop, but not by touching the faucet–the GFCI senses that the current is going somewhere it shouldn’t and quickly shuts off.
I got an induction hot plate 10 years ago when my gas stove only had one working top burner. I have a functional stove now and still use it all the time.
I have a recommendation for the editor. Wikipedia is a living document. By next month, or even within the week, Wikipedia contributors could rewrite those articles to better appeal to a general audience. I recommend that treatments of Wikipedia articles as they are written right now should, as a matter of style,
a) reference the date accessed (i.e. “as of today, Wikipedia’s article on …”), and
b) hyperlink to specific revisions of the Wikipedia articles being discussed.
One may find hyperlinks to any revision of a Wikipedia article by clicking on “View History” from the top-right of the article. The resulting page is a list of revisions, and every revision listed has a timestamp which is also a hyperlink to that particular revision.
The hyperlinks to the specific revisions of Wikipedia articles referenced in this Straight Dope column, at the time the column was published, are:
“Induction Heating.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Jan. 2023,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Induction_heating&oldid=1135370733
“Induction Cooking.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Feb. 2023,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Induction_cooking&oldid=1138992128
~Max
Yeah, this is an adjustment, but it’s quick and ultimately it’s a good one. I have a full size induction cooktop, which I use five nights a week. (One night a week I use the instant pot, one night we go out.) When I make pasta, I can get a big vessel of water up to rolling boil in a fraction of the time it used to take with gas or old-fashioned electric. I’ve been cooking for 40+ years and induction has been a revelation.
In the OP there is a confusion re the terms “magnetic” and “electromagnetic”. I believe the Wiki article is correct (magnetic), but Cecil is incorrect (electromagnetic). There is a subtle difference between “electromagnetic field” and “electromagnetic radiation” but I think we’re talking about radio, infrared, visible light, etc.
The eddy currents are induced by magnetic fields, right??
Huh. Then how am I able to trip the stop light on my carbon fiber bicycle? I thought those detectors worked be sensing weight or movement of being rolled over.
This is an excellent suggestion and I’ve instructed the Straight Dope technical support staff, namely Little Ed, to implement it. Since this consists of replacing the existing links with the URLs you’ve kindly supplied, I’m reasonably confident he’ll be able to carry out this assignment without screwing it up.
I’ve also told Ed we should do this whenever referring to a specific iteration of a Wikipedia page (as opposed to pages where all I’m looking for is a general discussion of a topic). A recent example is the Wikipedia page on “OK,” which I criticized in a recent column for saying the origins of the term were unknown, when in fact they’re well understood. That’s what the page said at the time, but I see someone has now edited it so it better aligns with reality. I’ve told Ed he should link to the prior iteration. Since this involves more than just copy-and-replace … well, if the SD site, or the entire Internet, crashes later today, you’ll know he got something tragically mixed up.
In any case, thanks for helping to advance our holy work.
It may be that the loop is sensitive enough to respond to the metal in your chain and other bits. The ones here have a line of three yellow dots on the road to indicate where to put your bike/motorcycle to trigger the sensor.