: why do blow dryers consume so much power?
In: Technology
It takes a hell of a lot of energy to do anything useful with heat.
As a rule of thumb for common household devices: devices that work with mechanical or light energy deal with tens of watts of power, but things that involve heat energy deal with thousands of watts.
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The heating elements are basically the same as a stove element or space heater or a toaster(all use lots of power), otherwise with how fast the air moves the air would always be cold with lower power heating elements
We generally don’t realize how much energy it takes to generate heat. Our electronics are so efficient that they use far less energy than is created by, say, a large candle. My entire gaming computer only produces maybe 200 watts, or 6 tea candles’ worth of heat. That’s really not a lot. A blowdryer, meanwhile, is more like 56 tea candles. It is making the air quite hot, and moving a *lot* of that air.
blowdriers need somethnig ot heat up the air they blow out
the act of blowing out the air is not very energy significant, but heating is , reason being you need a heating element for the air to go thru, these elements are essentially resistances that whne electricty flows thru them, they wont let it pass easily requirint more power ot be delivered to them so that the current goes thru them.
this generates heat that the element emits(oftne it glows red hot even)
It’s not just a hair dryer. It’s almost anything with a heating element. I have learned this the hard way being unable to run any two things with heat together in the same circuit of my poorly wired house without blowing the circuit. Like a hair dryer and electric frying pan.
The heat is generated by the resistance of a large amount of electricity passing through the element.
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