How do home ovens have hotter or colder zones inside, requiring you to rotate the pan or whatever is cooking. Wouldn’t a small enclosed space have a consistent temperature throughout? And bonus follow up, what sort of degree variation can there be?

Question

How do home ovens have hotter or colder zones inside, requiring you to rotate the pan or whatever is cooking. Wouldn’t a small enclosed space have a consistent temperature throughout? And bonus follow up, what sort of degree variation can there be?

In: 18

Answer 1

If you shine a heat lamp on something, it will get hot. If you enclose that object in a box it will radiate heat to it’s surroundings to heat the area around it up. As energy is lost in the process of heating the area up, the object will always be warmer than the area.