I saw a defrosting plate online and it didn’t look like it had to be plugged in or heated, but claims to defrost frozen food fast. How does something like this work?
In: Technology
In these passive plates, you aren’t adding heat, you’re subtracting cold.
The cold object, and the air around it want to equalize to the same temperature.
The plate is a very good conductor of heat, and it “sucks the cold” out of the frozen item, speeding up the process of equalizing temperatures by increasing the surface area available to dissipate the cold into the air.
They are usually made out of a specific type of ceramic, different from your dishes, or also aluminum, or other conductive metals.
(Yes, I’m completely skipping over the bit of physics that “cold” is just an absence of heat.)
So after a few minutes of researching these things, I’m going to guess what you’re looking at is made of aluminum. Aluminum is a great thermal conductor, mean it can easily transfer heat. In this case, heat from the air into the frozen food.
These things work best when something has a large surface area. The frozen food absorbs heat in the tray. Since the tray is slightly elevated on legs and has ridges or slats in the top, it’s surface contacts plenty of air flowing past it, absorbing heat from the air in the process which in turn is absorbed by the cold meat. This whole process is called conduction. It’s nothing magical, and definitely isn’t as fast as advertised, but if you have an aluminum pan or sheet, it’ll work almost as well and save you some defrosting time.
Room temperature is warmer than freezer temperature. A ceramic plate conducts heat more readily than air does.
We have one of these and my wife prefers defrosting with it rather than using the microwave. It is a light metal, fairly thick and appears to be cast aluminum.
My grandma uses a “thawmaster” it’s an aluminum slab with a rut cut around the edge for liquids to drain into as it defrosts. Works pretty well but it’s not gonna be ready in minutes.
Latest Answers