eli5: why isn’t it possible to cook e.g. cookies at twice the temperature for half the time? obviously i know it isn’t possible, but *why*? what’s the physics behind it?

Question

eli5: why isn’t it possible to cook e.g. cookies at twice the temperature for half the time? obviously i know it isn’t possible, but *why*? what’s the physics behind it?

In: 9

Answer 1

You’ll want to look up something called the Biot number. This number is the ratio of heat transfer (how much heat into the surface of something, in this case, from the oven to the cookie), relative to how quickly that heat can go from the outside of the cookie to the inside (thermal conductivity of the cookie). Imagine a case where the heat into the cookie is 10000X higher than how quickly that same amount of heat could travel to the center of the cookie. You’d end up with a cookie that is very burnt on the outside, and raw cookie dough in the middle.