Talk:Kettle

electric kettle efficiency

While an electric heating element is 100% efficient at converting electrical energy into heat, not all of this heat gets into the required water. A significant proportion is used to heat the kettle itself. Also, the minimum volume mark might be at a much larger volume than required. A 1.5 l plastic jug kettle with an exposed element might have a heat capacity equivalent to an additional 105 ml of water. A stainless steel squat kettle (non-jug) with a concealed element might have a heat capacity equivalent to an additional 230 ml of water.

The effective heat capacity of a kettle can be determined experimentally by boiling the minimum and the maximum volumes of water in the kettle from cold. Plot the 2 times against the volumes and draw a line between them, extending it until it crosses the volume axis. This should be a negative volume. The absolute value of that volume is equivalent to the effective heat capacity. Where the line crosses the time axis, this should be a positive value and indicates how much longer you have to wait just to heat up the kettle. You can check your experimental technique by repeating the measurements or by boiling another known volume of water somewhere between minimum and maximum. The resulting (volume,time) co-ordinates should lie on the same straight line.

An 'efficiency' value for a kettle can be defined as the ratio of the energy required to heat a desired volume of water (e.g. 220 ml standard cup) to the energy required to boil the kettle.

For the plastic kettle, the minimum volume mark corresponded to 350 ml. Add to this the additional volume for the heat capacity (105 ml) and the efficiency for a 220 ml cup full can be calculated as 220 / (350 + 105) or 48%.

For the metal kettle, the minimum volume mark corresponded to 550 ml. For a 220 ml cup, its efficiency is 220 / (550 + 230) or 28%.

(The above figures were derived from actual kettles. I ignored heat losses from the kettle, which might be 5-10%, as they are insignificant compared to the heat capacity of the kettle and extra water. The heat loss from a plastic kettle will be less than from a metal kettle as the outside surface temperatures are much lower for plastic. Also, kettles are often filled well above the minimum mark. Both of these factors will combine to reduce the above efficiency values still further. I have also ignored simple methods of reducing energy consumption; such as immediately refilling the kettle to the minimum mark after use so that the kettle starts warmer next time.)

There are several reasons the metal kettle has the higher heat capacity:

• the metal kettle is heavier
• stainless steel is a poor insulator, so the entire thickness of the kettle wall gets heated to the same temperature as the water
• plastic is a reasonable insulator, so there will be a large temperature gradient between the inside and the outside of the kettle meaning the average temperature of the kettle body will be lower than for metal (I can comfortably hold a plastic kettle full of boiled water by it body. I would get badly scalded if I tried the same with a metal kettle.)
• the concealed heating element might be heavier than the exposed element (?) - it takes much longer to start 'singing'

Ajrobb (talk) 04:19, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The kettle principle

Should there be something in this article giving the principles of the kettle? Obviously one of those principles is that it allows water to be exposed to a source of heat. However shouldn't there also be something along the lines of "Thermodynamically isolate the system to stop convection and conduction from equalizing the inside temperature with the outside temperature?" After all the article on Solar greenhouse gives exactly that as the first principle of the greenhouse. Or do you feel that it is the greenhouse article that inappropriately overemphasizes the significance of this isolation principle? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 04:53, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

History

According to this article, http://www.wickedlocal.com/carver/archive/x1713644944/Carver-home-of-the-teakettle Carver, Massachusetts claims to have produced the first tea kettle.

Rogerwho? (talk) 20:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Electric kettle boiling time

What are the factors involved in time taken by electric kettles to boil a cup of water? I'm always amazed in the variation in time taken by different kettles. Unfortunately, my current model is the slowest I've ever seen :-( --83.38.126.5 (talk) 14:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Lloyd's Patent Table Kettle

An editor posted me a link to a 1800 advertisement for the Lloyd's Patent Table Kettle and suggested it might be added to the article Kettle. I am not sure exactly how this could be done or what a table kettle looks like (maybe like this?). Here is the text:

SINGLE LADIES or GENTLEMEN living in Apartments, at Breakfaſt or Tea-time, after Supper, at any time of the day or night, from one quart to one gallon of Boiling Water may be had on the Table every Ten Minutes, for leſs than One Penny expence, by means of LLOYD'S PATENT TABLE KETTLE, which, for Sick Rooms, is declared to be truly invaluable. - To be had only of the Inventor and Patentee, No 178, Strand, two doors Weſt of Norfolk-∫treet , where it may be ∫een in actual uſe.

— The Times, 29 May 1800

-84user (talk) 11:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Tea pot?

> "A kettle, sometimes called tea kettle, teakettle or tea pot" I don't think this is correct - does anyone call a kettle a "tea pot"? Tea pots are for putting tea in, surely, not for heating the water. Dictionaries seem to agree with me so I've corrected this unless someone can cite a reliable reference.Gymnophoria (talk) 20:43, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting the impression that Americans often confuse kettles with teapots. I understand that kettles are rare in the US, because their low voltage means they take forever to heat up. 92.29.120.26 (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

The speed depends on the electric power (Watt) and not voltage. A european lightbulb would also be darker in the us, yet the use electic light there.89.204.153.106 (talk) 15:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Do not look like teapots

Used "...in preparation for making tea or other beverages requiring hot water. Kettles often resemble teapots, but are used to boil water, not to brew tea."

Most kettles do not look like teapots. Kettles can be used to heat water for any purpose, not just making tea. 92.29.120.26 (talk) 21:31, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Automatic switch off and boil dry protection not even described let alone explained

The automatic switch off mechanism after boiling of most modern kettles, along with any secondary boil dry mechanism also, are not even mentioned let alone decribed and explained in this or related articles.

I first I thought that the primary mechanism was a bimetallic switch it is clear however that the vertical post with a hole in it is likely an capilliary to an air pressure sensor switch that gets triggered either by the -ve vacuum produced by the escaping steam or +ve pressure of same into the tube. Any self-resetting bimetalic switch is liekly to be used inline and attached immediately adjacent to the element for overheat or boil dry protection.

So there is much more to humble electric kettle tech than meets the eye! 122.148.41.172 (talk) 06:11, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Svenska language link links to wrong English article

For whomever most cares for this page, please know that the Svenska language link links to the wrong English article. This English "kettle" article links to a Svenska "kittel" article. Though the words are obviously etymologically related, Swedish "kittle" means "cauldron", NOT "kettle". To the best of my ability, I believe the Swedish word for kettle is "vattenkokare". However, the Swedish wiki entry for "vattenkokare" focuses only on / and links to "electric water boilers". Though one could exist, I haven't found a kettle article in Swedish. I'll post on the Swedish sites as well, since things perhaps need to be untangled on that end. :) Pillartopost (talk) 14:57, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Advantages

It's easier, and much safer to pour boiling water from a kettle, than a saucepan. 86.171.198.162 (talk) 03:03, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

'Wi-Fi' kettle

Well he finally did get a cuppa!

Bonnie Malkin (12 October 2016) "English man spends 11 hours trying to make cup of tea with Wi-Fi kettle" theguardian.com, Retrieved 12 October 2016.

220 of ^Borg 12:53, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

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Revert?

Hi User:Andy Dingley. Why did you revert this please? I added relevant referenced content to the article earlier.Zigzig20s (talk) 23:37, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

You did indeed. But is this enough to add a very broad article to a narrow-topic project? Bugs have been put into kettles (news to me, thanks). But bugs have also been put into almost every commonplace piece of home or office equipment - socket outlets, clocks, smoke detectors, coat hooks, as just a few. Does that make the broad topics for those articles within the scope of the surveillance project?

If you really think so, then re-add it. But I'm not seeing enough significance. It's the ubiquity and mundanity of kettles which led to this, not their specialism. Andy Dingley (talk) 07:55, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Further, there are some other problems with this. It's a 5 year old story and poorly sourced to just one Russian snippet. We'd expect to have seen more by now. Secondly, what did this "bug" do? It's claimed that it connects to open Wi-Fi networks, (vaguely) that it could then be a spam-sending or botnet node, that it might send data back to its controllers (what on? How much tea you drink?) and then (even more vaguely) that there might have been a microphone. So is this a botnet, or a bug? If it's ubiquitous, that suggests a botnet. If you can bug a particular kettle, somewhere interesting, that suggests a bug. But you don't put your bug into everything and listen everywhere - that just gets the "don't trust the kettles" secret into the open sooner. Maybe the modern version mines cryptocurrencies, and they use the processors to heat the water! Andy Dingley (talk) 11:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Invention of the kettle?

Electric kettles in 1900

I was reading that Sholom Borgelman owned a sheet metal company and invented the tea kettle after WWI. Enigma^msg 19:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

The tea kettle, even the electric tea kettle, pre-dates WWI. He might have invented a kettle, but not kettles in general. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

OK, to be more specific, it says he invented the "whistling tea kettle" after WWI. Enigma^msg 22:07, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

• Well some of that is probably related to British social changes after WWI. Women worked outside the home during WWI, usually for the first time. There was also an expansion of women in nursing. So afterwards, they stayed working and there was a shortage of domestic servants. Secondly, returning soldiers married and started families, which involved moving out into their own homes. There was a shift to new and "improved" housing.

So there was now a significant shift for many, many families. A move from tea being made around a kitchen and a coal range, watched directly over by a housewife (or in middle class homes, a cook making tea in the kitchen), to tea now being served in a parlour with the kettle unattended over either a range or, more likely, a gas cooker. So a "boiling signaller" now becomes useful where it never was before. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Electric kettles in America - delete the claim that they are less popular there because of the lower mains voltage

First, the references cited do not seem to be very serious. To say at least.

Second. Since I moved to the US I also noticed they don't use electric kettles as often as Europeans, but this cannot be related to the voltage. Although it's true that an usual American electric outlet cannot give as much power (around 1.5 kW) than an European one (up to around 3 kW), most of the kettles I encountered in Poland and Iceland were around 2 kW, which is not significantly more than the one I have in the US now, which is 1.5 kW. It also wasn't difficult to buy it. Since 1.5 kW of power is enough to boil a liter of water in reasonable and insignificant time, the reason for a lower electric kettle "market share" in America must be different. Maybe it's something like a custom or cultural difference. But not mains power. Borys1703 (talk) 07:13, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I have removed the explanation. 77.227.68.81 (talk) 10:15, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, here in the UK, while some kettles are around 3 kW, around 2 kW seems to be more typical. So it would appear it is largely a cultural difference. But either way, it makes me wonder: do Americans boil water much less often, or tend to prefer other means of doing so? — Smjg (talk) 13:25, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I've certainly encountered kettles in Canadian hotel rooms that bring water to acceptable tea-making temperature just as quickly as the one in the kitchen of Larrington Towers in London. The dual-voltage travel kettle that accompanies me on Transatlantic trips, on the other hand, takes until forever when fed with feeble North American voles. It might have something to do with the wiring and phases of the supply but when a friend started to try to explain such things I lost the will to live. Electricity is only one stage removed from witchcraft ;-)

The accepted method in much of the US seems to be to heat water in a microwave or have a dedicated hot water dispenser, though I did find an impressive display of electric kettles in a Target store in El Paso when seeking a replacement for my previous travel kettle, which had died on its arse with a week of the trip to go chiz. Mr Larrington (talk) 23:30, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

A litre is quite a lot. With a 1.5kW kettle that will take about 4 minutes, this seems rather slow. A 3kW kettle can do that in under two minutes- a considerable difference. Even a 2kW kettle will take a whole minute less than a US kettle. GliderMaven (talk) 03:52, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

This is just silly. We Americans, by and large, prefer to drink coffee. That's why the majority of American households has a coffee maker in place of an electric kettle. I'm one of the weirdos that prefers tea, so I have an electric kettle, and I didn't even know that European ones boiled water faster. It's just not something we think about. Technology Connections has a video explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.139.109 (talk) 21:26, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Gallery

There is, I believe, an excessive amount of images especially when one considers the inclusion of the Gallery section. What might be the thoughts of others?Hu Nhu (talk) 17:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Tea-centric

Significant portions of the article are written as if preparing tea is the primary or sole purpose of a kettle. In particular:

• "Not to be confused with teapot" - why this in particular?
• A section on "automatic kettles", which are devices explicitly geared towards making tea, but nothing in the article about devices explicitly geared towards making coffee (of which there are several kinds) or anything else. Furthermore, the reference does not call these automatic kettles - it calls them automatic tea kettles. The phrase "automatic kettle" would imply something more general in its scope of use; the results of a quick Amazon search don't largely seem to be those described in the article.
• Of the nine 'see also' links, three are specifically about tea, and for a further three I'm not sure whether the appliances described are primarily for preparing tea or the articles suffer the same flaw as this one.

I would guess the term "tea kettle" originated from a time when "kettle" had a broader meaning. Maybe in some cultures kettles are primarily associated with tea. In others, they may be primarily associated with coffee or some other beverage. Here in Britain, kettles are probably associated with tea and coffee pretty much equally. Of course, there are many other uses. Maybe in yet other cultures, the primary use would be to boil water in order to cook vegetables, rice, etc.

I'm going to try and improve the article a bit, but can anyone help? — Smjg (talk) 18:09, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits have added this statement, which has been removed and reinstated multiple times:

"As indicated by its name, the kettle was and is often used as teaware to brew tea or prepare a tisane. Some very modern versions do more than just boil water, and also make the tea and keep it warm. "

There are a few problems with this statement:

• It is perpetuating the misconception that preparing tea is the primary or sole purpose of a kettle, even more so considering its placement in the lead. Since kettles are used to prepare a wide variety of beverages, there's no reason to single out tea/tisanes for mention here.
• How on earth does the word "kettle" indicate this?
• It isn't clear whether these "very modern versions" being talked about are the "automatic tea kettles" which have a section in the article or something else. But it would appear that such devices aren't really versions of the kettle, but distinct, specialised appliances, which I suppose would be called teamakers, just like coffeemakers are coffeemakers not kettles.

— Smjg (talk) 22:12, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

"Spying kettle" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Spying kettle and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 7#Spying kettle until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. TartarTorte 19:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)