6 ms·

So thinning out the bottom of the pot with a metal drill bit won't work? Why not?

• loonster 4y ago
  Because the goal of boiling water for most cooking is to heat the water to the boiling point and not to make steam. You also have to deal with cleaning a pan with micro cavities.
  • DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
    Well it could work for kitchenware if you're living on boiled distilled water...
• tomjakubowski 4y ago
  I think the idea of the pits is to increase the surface area contacting the water and heating it.
  • moviewise 4y ago
    But you could make small pits on the bottom of a pot with a metal drill bit, couldn't you? And this would increase the surface area contacting the water and heating it, right?
    • qbrass 4y ago
      They're not really pits, they're microscopic tubes that stick up from the surface. The point of them is to act like a chimney for steam to rise from instead of sticking to the surface of the pan where they insulate the water from the pan itself. That said, they also probably add surface area just from being a bunch of tubes sticking up into the water. I still support you in your endeavors of dimpling cookware. There are worse ways to kill a few hours than doing science in the kitchen.
• kadoban 4y ago
  The whole point of using metal for pots is that they're quite high heat conduction, which should limit any gains there. So I suspect you could get a _small_ improvement by thinning, but I doubt it'd even be noticable. It'd be a mix of reducing the mass to be heated and increasing the heat conduction, both very small effects.