On Q.E.D.'s toaster answer: sure, but as long as you aren’t jamming the knife around in the toaster, you should be fine. I frequently will use a knife to pick up the edge of the hot toast that is sticking out the top of the toaster, not even touching the plastic shell of the toaster, much less the metal frame, and certainly not the coils. With care, this is totally safe.
I once was doing exactly this at a motel’s continental breakfast bar, and this middle-aged woman who was getting cereal or something further down actually jumped to my side, unplugged the toaster, and removed my toast herself, giving me a short lecture on how it’s dangerous to use a knife to remove toast. I was pretty annoyed—it’s not even like I was a little kid (where this might not be totally unacceptable); I think I was about 20 at the time.
And a final thought: they make wooden tongs for removing toast from toasters. The utensil is essentially just a long V-shaped piece of wood (usually with decoration at the end), which has enough give in it that you can pick up pieces of toast. Useful (this is what I use at home), and makes a great gift.
My problem with blahedo’s post has less to do with the inherent danger he subjects himself to (as ol’ Unca Cece himself once called it, “Shaking hands with Jesus.”), but those who might espy his manner of toast retrieval. The problem with old habits is that you get to the point that you don’t even realize what you’re doing. Imagine a child seeing ‘uncle bla’ picking his toast out with a knife, while i have every confidence that blahedo understands the danger and takes the proper precautions to reduce the risk of shock, a child isn’t going to have that same understanding, he’s just going to know that is a way to remove toast cause he’s seen it done. I don’t even mean to suggest that blahedo would purposely do this in the presence of a child, but he did do it at the motel breakfast bar in front of others. Therein lies the danger.
I have a problem with the description of how a toaster works.
“A toaster works by causing a current to flow through a special type of wire with a high resistance to electrical current”
The wire in a toaster or any other electrical heating device uses LOW resistance wire not HIGH resistance wire.
This is because you want a lot of current to flow through the wire so that it will heat up. A high resistance wire would lessen the amount of current flowing and therefore would not heat up as much.
That depends entirely on your definition of high versus low. In this case, it means that the resistance of the wire in the toaster (called nichrome, because it’s an alloy of nickel and chromium) has a higher resistance than the copper electrical wiring in the toaster’s power cord. The higher resistance conversts the current flow into heat.
If the coils in the toaster had the same resistance per unit of length as the electrical wiring, they wouldn’t get any warmer than the power cord does.
Well folks, it would seem that the shallow end of the gene pool is getting more populated every day. Perhaps some should be ENCOURGED to shove that eatin’ iron down inside a hot to trot Mr Toaster, they may be illuminated by the experience.
It is true that V=IxR, but the heat comes from I-squared-R losses.
V = IxR
P = VxI (single phase AC or DC only)
P = (IxR)xI = I^2 x R
All electrical circuits have it to some degree. This is why we step up voltage with transformers before we transmit it over long distances. Voltage goes up, so current goes down; and since resistance is a constant for the most part, we minimize the effect.
There’s really no “coversion” taking place, just those pesky immutable laws of physics. Some person much smarter than I thought to take advantage of I^2-R and use some high-resistance wire to turn this effect into a useful means to toast his bread.
I think low resistance wire would draw too much current and call for larger elements to handle it, lest they be blown. I also think the degree of resistance we’re talking about is very tiny; since I = V/R, a small change in R one way would cause a large difference in I in the other.
My first thought upon reading the (excellent) answer was, “Damnit, Q.E.D., how’re we gonna weed out the dumb ones now?” We’ll have to fall back on plan B (operating hair dryer in bathtub) and plan C (peeing on electric fences).
I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of damaging the mica. Maybe that’s why my (engineer) dad is always so careful to keep them wooden toaster tongs next to the toaster …
– Dragonblink, who once touched the “hot” prong while pulling an electrical cord out of a socket and does not remember the experience fondly.
I tried this a couple of times as a kid. I think the first was to get the toast out, the others were in pursuit of science.
I never got a shock or anything, but the coil would break as I touched it with the knife. I never figured the reason for why it would break, but it really made my Mom mad!
All you guys are wimps. I tell ya, there’s nothing more relaxing than soaking in the jacuzzi after a hard day at work, eating pizza fresh from your jacuzzi-side pizza oven…
I must take issue with this article and it’s poor use of statistics. Is the goal not to fight ignorance?
This statistic does NOTHING to back up your point. It gives NO information about the danger of toaster poking. All 15 of those deaths could be from people using electric heaters to warm up their bath water, or trying to change the power supply in a computer while it is plugged it.
The article gave plenty of fact based information for intelligent adults to draw their own conclusions of the risks. There was no need to add “scared straight” bogus statistics. I refuse to “Just say NO!” to toaster poking.
I guess I’m one of the very few who thinks Q.E.D.'s staff report, while doubtless technically correct, didn’t seem particularly reasonable from at least a layman’s risk analysis perspective. Why is a mere 15 deaths a year considered worth changing such a statistically very safe behavior? I would think that more people die annually from picking their noses!
I’ve been taught to analyze risks in a relative sense rather than an absolute one. If one doesn’t do so, one ends up being too terrified to drive, too terrified to bathe, too terrified to climb stairs, too terrified to fly, all of which I think are much more dangerous than sticking a knife in the toaster (correct me if I’m statistically mistaken about that).
Why isn’t a more reasonable reply to say something like: “There’s a tiny risk, so if tiny risks concern you, you should think about not doing it.”
I mean, Q.E.D.'s reply suggests to me that perhaps he/she worries that he/she will be held legally responsible if the report didn’t warn people strongly enough or something!
Risk analysis aside, why do something stupid when there are perfectly safe methods of doing exactly the same thing? my report certainly didn’t take an alarmist tone. I merely warned of the danger that, yes, one can be electrocuted by doing that. If you want to go and stick a knife in there, go right ahead. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
