Why is the water inside the kettle not electrified?
In: Physics
House fires used to be caused from short circuits because the short circuit would draw more current then the wire in the walls was capable of handling which caused the wire in the walls to get so hot it would melt its insulation and light off anything flammable.
So now we use circuit breakers to stop wires from carrying too much electricity but we figured out that we can purposefully overload wires or any conductive metal surface like it with electricity to generate heat and we can encase those wires in ceramic or some heat resistant insulation to have a non conductive heating element that we can easily control by the amount of electricity we let flow through.
So the heating element in your water could just be the shortest path to ground, when you electrolyze water you usually have two electrodes in the water forcing the electricity to jump from one to the other through the water. With a heating element its usually one long large heating wire maybe coiled up a bit but all one piece so no reason to jump from one part to the next through the more resistive water.
Latest Answers