Re: Ask EU: Bread makers

In message <mtenj19nn4kj19dnfpsrv6nqs69u41ib4o@xxxxxxx>, Jo Lonergan <jolonergan@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:44:21 +0100, "GM6TRS"
<gm6trs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Colin Blackburn" <colin.blackburn@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dhdug7$3qo$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Can any umrats who use the above tell me the wattage, and model, of
their bread makers? (It'll be on a little panel on the back or the
bottom.)
[]
240 V, 50 Hertz (I thought that was radios?), 550 W..
[]
I feel that schoolmaster hat coming on again ...

They'll _all_ be 240 (or 230) volts, if sold for use in this country: volts is how hard the mains supply pushes (nice old term "voltaic pressure" - which I was delighted to find still in use in a switchgear company I worked in in the early 1980s!). You didn't give the wattage, which is what Colin was after (from later posts, 550 watts - about 2/3 of a horsepower - seems to be the norm).

[Not getting at Jo here BTW; lack of scientific knowledge I blame on unenthusiastic teachers, and even they probably had to struggle with curricula and so on.]

The hertz (no capital letter when written out, only when abbreviated as Hz) is what used to be called cycles per second; yes, you do find them in radios, but just rather more of them. 50 hertz is what we've run our generators at in this country ever since the national grid was set up: a steady 50 cycles a second, or 3000 RPM if you like, which is what all the generators in this country run at. (And about half the world; the other half use 60 cycles a second. Which is why the hum on old Bob Newhart LPs is more noticeable - not really because it's higher, though it is a bit, but because we've grown somewhat immune to 50 Hz and its harmonics.)

If you make electrical signals oscillate a lot faster, they radiate more from the wires that are carrying them; once you get above a few hundred cycles per second (the electricity supply in aircraft is often 400 Hz rather than 50 or 60, for some reason - I presume to do with the speeds aero engines are normally run at), the oscillations tend to be created with electronics, rather than mechanical generators. When you get to two hundred thousand cycles per second, they radiate very well from wires of lengths related to 1500 metres (usually half or quarter that), and you have radio 4 long wave. (Actually it's 198 kHz these days, not 200.) The _size_ of the oscillations is varied by audio signals, i. e. what we can hear - from a few tens of hertz to ten or twenty thousand - and when this "modulation" is picked off, amplified, and fed to a speaker, we hear the Archers.

Hope I've not bored too much - I just thought Jo's reference to radios might mean this (why hertz are used for both) might be of interest to some.

I've always thought I'd be good at writing textbooks ...

(I may miss newsgroup followups, though I try not to; I _do_ read email though.)
[* Send to G6JPG@soft255 - not nospam - if I'm posting or replying to a post. *]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for thoughts on PCs. **

"Tolerating intolerance is not a virtue." - Barry Shein
.

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