Simmerstats: The genius old tech that controls your stovetop

Home appliances be like “Wait it’s all bimetallic strips?” “Always has been”

"Didn't imagine this script would get so out of hand" my Brother in Christ, you have never written a script that is in hand.

I'm a licensed electrician and I tend to just send people to your channel as you explain this stuff better then I ever could 😂

My takeaway from this channel is that the bimetallic strip is the pillar of pre-electronic control circuits. Good job for a small piece of metal!

"My favorite channel is talking about stoves today" ... My friends have learned to expect this sort of remark from me.

I’m calling it. Our old friend, Mr. Bimetallic Strip.

I love the bit about "I added lights, because it pleases me. I'm not going to show you how." I can't help but assume there's some questionable wiring going on inside that box.

With many of my favourite YouTubers giving up the game lately, I'm glad to see one that say "bugger the algorithm, I'm going to make videos about stuff I like at (mostly) my own pace". Thanks for keeping up the informative entertainment that fits right into my wheelhouse.

If there's one thing this channel has taught me, it's that the simplest and cheapest way to reliably cycle something on and off is a bimetallic strip coupled to its own output.

I saw the thumbnail and went "why would I watch a video on that?" and then I realized it was Technology Connections and I went "oh boy, that sounds more wonderful, sign me up!" It isn't just the topics and interesting discussion, amigo, YOU are the reason this works.

I’ve been a professional appliance tech for over 12 years. I work on ranges of all types almost daily…. and I just learned a shitload! Alec is just the best.

At 5:30, Alec threatened not to go down a tangent, the savage. I held my breath, alarmed! I was deeply relieved when he stayed true to his brand and went down the tangent! By gum, we come for the tangents, nerd stuff and witty observations, dang it! :) Keep up the great work, my man!

"I added the lights because it pleases me" I LOVE the matter of fact honesty lol, they please me too.

"Does that mean that this is a hob knob?" "I don't know how I live with me, either" Alec was sure feeling his Wheaties for this script!

Technology like this where logic is accomplished through clever use of materials science and geometry is so fascinating to me. I tend to imagine that there's just a PCB or something in these kinds of devices, but I never really thought about how they made electric stovetops work before you could just stick circuit boards in everything. It takes a lot of creativity to engineer things like this!

I remember when my dad explained how the thermostat for our electric heater worked. It was a wall-mounted thermostat, where you simply set the temperature you wanted. Easy enough. It was in series with the heater, so when you reached the temperature, it opened the circuit. Easy enough. But the thermostat had a wall plug?? Oh, my dad loved to explain this one. That current heated up the bi-metalic strip just a tiny, tiny bit inside the thermostat, so that the heater would now believe it was hotter than it really was. Throw any crude timer device on this, and now you have a thermostat with night time adjustment! Today, I have a smart home with 100 devices, rules as complex as the Apollo 11, and besides it knowing if today is a banking holiday or not, it does the exact same thing. There's a real appreciation in rudimentary technology that I wish we never forget.

“Through the magic of buying two of them”🤗🤗🤗 My favorite line in any Technology Connections video!

Babe wake up, toaster boy is making another connection to… somehow every other video they’ve ever made.

I was a repair man for a famous company for about 30 years. When I started working for them, they only had washers, dryers, dishwashers and disposers. Suddenly, they bought another company that made kitchen products. At that time, the cooktops used voltage controlled infinite switches. no matter what the wattage of the element, the switch cycled as expected. It was great because all the elements took the same switch, the only difference was knob direction and mounting screw location. with the advent of disc elements and glass tops, they quietly introduced the type of current controlled infinite switches that you demonstrated in this video. If the guy who ordered the parts didn't look carefully at the part numbers, you would get the wrong switch for the size element and then the fun would begin. I'm not so sure why they became so popular with design engineers but they weren't so popular with technicians. I suspect that by having a resistor in lime with the load made the arc flash a little less noticeable when the switch cycled but, as you shower, it was still there. I actually met a man who claimed that he was a scientist who worked on a project to make the purest tungsten possible so that switches would not flash when they opened or closed. he said that it was not possible to make tungsten switch contacts any purer but another research team had come to the conclusion that pounding switch contacts together at high speed reduced the arc flash to an acceptable level and the modern switch was born. Luckily, the arc flash is conveniently hidden by metal pannels so very few (not nobody_ complain about it

We LOVE and EXPECT and DEMAND for the script to go out of hand. It's what makes this channel awesome!!