This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Too Hot to Handle
Oct
26
2019
Somewhere in my schooling, I learned that the process that uses the most energy is phase change. So to take a lot of heat out of something, put water on it and the boiling will take up the heat from the object, leaving the object cooler.
Fast forward some years and I was about to get a pan out of the oven and a hot pad was not readily available. But a towel was right nearby.
My brain recalled the bit of trivia about how to consume a large amount of heat and it came up with the plan of using a dish towel that was wet.
The pan in the oven should have been about 350 degrees, which is about the 212 for boiling water, so all the water in the dish towel should boil off and drop the temperature of the dish to something that can be handled with a dish towel instead of a hot pad.
I was glad I grabbed it cautiously because I was able to set it right back on the oven rack instead of dropping it on the floor when my hands felt the sensation of searing heat.
I think two things happened:
1. My hands were grabbing the wet dish towel, surrounding the part that touched the hot pan. So all the steam that was produced had to go past my skin. And:
2. Thin wet dish towels are a good conductor of heat. So even if my plan had reduced the temperature of the pan to 211, that meant I was essentially grabbing a 211-degree pan with my bare hands.
Not quite the best plan, but I didn’t know that at the time. Now I do, and now you do too.
And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece,now drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water.
Judges 6:38
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 2:13 pm and has been carefully placed in the Mishaps category.
