why does popcorn seem to pop at a somewhat consistent rate regardless of the amount, instead of all of them popping closer to at the same time?

Question

why does popcorn seem to pop at a somewhat consistent rate regardless of the amount, instead of all of them popping closer to at the same time?

In: Physics

Answer 1

I haven’t really checked it, but here is my intuition:

It takes about 400x more energy to boil/evaporate water than to heat it by one degree.

Since you need to evaporate water for popcorn to pop and energy is limited in vast majority of cases (such as being heated from the bottom), the popping rate will be limited by how much power is used.

There are small differences between kernels, its almost impossible to heat them all uniformly. Therefore your rate will be: power/(energy to pop a kernel).