Episode 150: How Home Appliances Work

The Science of Everything Podcast

James Fodor

Natural Sciences, Science, Social Sciences

4.8 • 750 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2024

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An exploration into the exciting world of home appliances and devices. We begin with a journey through the kitchen, discussing the design and operating principles behind the refrigerator, rice cooker, convection oven, microwave, and dishwasher. We proceed to the laundry to examine how the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, clothes iron, and dryer work. Finally we take a bathroom break and consider how the flush toilet, sinks, and plumbing work. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a PayPal donation or becoming a Patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.
0:13.0	Oh, wow.
0:15.0	Oh, my. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast episode 150, how home appliances work.
0:41.1	I'm your host, James Fodor.
0:43.5	So to celebrate the milestone of 150 episodes of the podcast, I'm going to do something a little bit
0:49.7	different, which if you've been long-term listeners, you may may know was actually an original intention of this podcast,
0:56.2	which was to talk more about how stuff works. And we've done a little bit of that in the past.
1:01.8	They did a series on how computers work, for example. But in this episode, what we're going to look at
1:06.9	is a variety of other home appliances, or I I guess technologies more broadly. So we're going
1:13.7	to focus on items you'd find in the kitchen, the laundry and the bathroom and just talk a bit
1:18.3	about some of the engineering and science behind them. Many of these devices aren't especially
1:22.6	complicated, at least in general principles, much simpler than computers, for example, but nonetheless, I think
1:28.0	they're quite interesting, and it's been a enjoyable experience to read up and learn more about how they work.
1:34.5	And one of the advantages of doing this episode now is I can appeal to some of the physics and chemistry
1:42.1	principles that we've covered in previous episodes. Also, at the conclusion of the content, I'll talk a little bit more about the future of the show and some ideas I have going forward, so stay tuned for that.
1:54.0	But without further ado, let's jump in and start going through the list of appliances and technologies that I have here, starting in the kitchen
2:01.3	with, I think, probably the most interesting, one of the more interesting examples, which is
2:06.3	the refrigerator. So a fridge is a home appliance which consists of a thermally insulated
2:12.7	compartment and a heat pump. So the simple idea is that the heat pump transfers heat from inside
2:20.3	the insulated compartment to the external environment, which cools the internal compartment
2:25.3	below the room temperature. Fairly simple in principle. The technique behind it is interesting,
2:31.3	so we'll go through that. Iceboxes have been used for centuries as a way
	...

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