I’m not talking about the motor. I’m talking about the other part where you put liquids.
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That is where the electric motor sits. Motors aren’t 100% efficient, which means that not all energy it uses is applied to motion. The extra energy is radiated as heat. It is that heat that you feel.
For the blades to spin, there has to be a connection between the motor that is outside the pitcher and the blades inside the pitcher. Obviously this connection needs to be water tight. To make it water tight, there is a seal on the bottom of the pitcher that squeezes against the spinning shaft that connects the motor to the blades. Especially when the blender is empty and dry, there is a lot of friction on the seal so it generates a lot of heat.
The other comments correctly describe the heat generated by the motor and the bearing/seal at the bottom of the cup.
However, in case you’re talking about why the contents get hot, like when you use a Vitamix on high for a while to heat up soup…that’s basically because all energy eventually ends up as heat. The blender motor is putting out a lot of power (some blenders are as high as 1500W)…a little bit gets lost as heat in the motor, a little gets lost as friction in the bearing…the rest goes where you want it…slicing & mixing & stirring the food. But *then* where does it go?
Initially it goes into chopping whatever’s in the blender (chopping takes energy) but pretty soon you’ve chopped as much as you can and you’re just maddly stirring the whole puree. Which is kind of the point of a blender. But the puree has friction when it moves and the blender is moving it a *lot* and that generates heat. Potentially a lot if you let the blender run for a while.
All that power from the motor that *didn’t* go into waste heat in the motor or friction in the bearing or chopping turns into heat in the food. Hence Vitamix hot soup.
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