Egg cooker

Saw this gizmo on Instapundit, and decided to try it.

It uses but little water, and 350 watts of power.  Let's do the math.  There are two ounces of water being used.  That's 1/8 of a pound, as a pint weighs about a pound.  Thus, to raise the temperature to boiling requires  140 degree F delta t.  If you divide 140 by 8, you get 17.5 joules in order to raise 2 ounces to boiling point.  Convert to watts, and you get 17.5 watts times 1/4 hour and you obtain  4 1/8 watt hours.  Does not sound like much energy expenditure.  Too little....

The device claims it uses 350 watts, so let's try another angle.  One quarter hour yields just shy of 90 watt hours.  Hmm.  I think this version is more accurate.

Anyway, I ran the device on my off-grid equipment.  There was a voltage drop to just under 12 volts, but the system ran okay for about seven minutes or so.  The thing has an automatic shutoff, which is set by a temperature sensor.

The water was boiling, as you might have expected.  It doesn't take that much energy to get the water to boiling, as we see above.  To make it boil maybe takes more energy, thus the discrepancy.  Maybe, the discrepancy was rather large.

The battery returned to normal voltage rather quickly.  The upshot here is that this device will work with the equipment I have, and therefore, I should be able to cook a solar cooked egg. 

Whoop-de-doo doo.