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<\/p>\nRocket Scientist Designed A Saucepan That Boils Water So Fast, You Can Watch It<\/h1>\n
They say a watched pot never boils. But you’ve never watched a pot like this. Sit back and enjoy the show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
Thomas Povey<\/a>‘s day job usually involves designing jet engines, not kitchen gadgets. But when the\u00a0Oxford University<\/a>\u00a0engineering professor was on a camping trip, he started thinking about how to make a pot that could boil water faster. A few years later, the idea has morphed into a series of ultra-efficient indoor pans that save\u00a0energy<\/a>\u00a0and time on\u00a0gas stoves<\/a>.<\/p>\n At first,\u00a0Povey<\/a>\u00a0was thinking only about the camping market. “At high altitude, it takes absolutely forever to boil water, so improving the efficiency of\u00a0heat transfer<\/a>\u00a0to the pan makes a big difference,” he says. By chance, other engineers were working on similar designs for camping at the same time, so he shifted his focus to the kitchen instead.<\/p>\n For many people, the most obvious draw of the pots and pans might be the fact that you can cook much faster with them–in tests, water came to a boil 3.3 minutes faster than in a normal pot. But the\u00a0energy savings<\/a>\u00a0are also large.<\/p>\n “A conventional pan of the same size uses 44% more gas,” explains Povey. “This is quite a significant saving, but also gets people thinking about\u00a0energy consumption<\/a>\u00a0with a product that is very visibly consuming energy–unlike the\u00a0invisible energy<\/a>\u00a0of most of appliances like dishwashers and fridges.”<\/p>\n The design uses patented fins to pull heat across the bottom of the pan and up the sides. It isn’t the first time an engineer has tried to add heat exchangers to cooking equipment, but it’s complicated to get the design right. “It is harder than you might imagine to address all the challenges of performance, aesthetics, and function simultaneously,” Povey says.<\/p>\n It took three years of research in the lab to create a design that people would actually want to buy. One early version improved efficiency by 100%, but looked so different that the manufacturer Povey partnered with said that it would never succeed, claiming it looked “great, but insane.”<\/p>\n The final\u00a0set of products<\/a>, which includes frying pans, a stockpot, and a saucepan, will be on sale through the U.K. cooking supplier Lakeland in August.<\/p>\n Of course, if you really want to save energy while you’re cooking, what you’re making for dinner matters more than what you’re using to make it. Beef, for example, is responsible for\u00a0five times more greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>\u00a0than chicken, and a couple of hamburgers might use 12 or 13\u00a0times more energy<\/a>\u00a0than an hour of cooking the stove itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thomas Povey’s day job usually involves designing jet engines, not kitchen gadgets. http:\/\/www.fastcoexist.com\/3033435\/a-rocket-scientist-designed-a-saucepan-that-boils-water-so-fast-you-can-watch-it Rocket Scientist Designed A Saucepan That Boils Water So Fast, You Can Watch It They say a watched pot never boils. But you’ve never watched a pot like this. Sit back and enjoy the show. Thomas Povey‘s day job usually involves … Continue reading Amazing Saucepans<\/span> ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/e.fastcompany.net\/multisite_files\/fastcompany\/imagecache\/inline-large\/inline\/2014\/07\/3033435-inline-s-flare-pot-04.jpg\")
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