Thursday, February 23, 2006
Micathermic?
You learn a new word everyday. I need to buy a standalone heater because my room is always freezing, so I went online to target.com to try and see what units they had in stock. (Since the winter season is almost over I was worried that they wouldn't have any left). I did a search on "convection" heaters, since the last time I looked at heaters I noticed that these types of heaters seemed to be better for heating up a whole room without using a noisy fan. I didn't get any hits! (Well, that's not exactly true. I got like 500 hits in their "books" section. I guess cookbooks mention convection alot?) So I kind of got worried, thinking that maybe my worst fears had been realized and Target had no more heaters. So I searched for "heaters" instead, and voila! Up came a bunch of heaters. One of the first ones, though, was one that was described as being "micathermic".
What the hell does "micathermic" mean? Surprisingly, this word does not exist at dictionary.com! I got a semi-description of it when I google'd it, but it's from a site that's trying to sell you a product, so it's not exactly a technical description of what's going on. As far as I can tell, it has something to do with heating things via infrared radiation. I'm going to guess that somehow a piece of ceramic or steel is heated using this infrared radiation, and then convection carries the heat out, but I'm not sure since I can't get a really good description of how it works.
Not surprisingly though, almost all of the hits for "micathermic" came from sites in the UK. Why is that the Brits always have the better knowledge of things, even though we seem to invent them over here? Their photography mags, music mags, computer mags, non-fiction, fiction, even films, all seem to be better than their American counterparts. What the heck?! Are we really the ignorant, uncultured, rebellious hooligans, kicked out of Britain 200 years ago, that the rest of the world thinks we are??
In any case, I'll probably try and find one for a reasonable price and try it out, since I don't like those "electric-coil-heated-up-with-a-grill-in-front" heaters that only heat the area right in front of them and are an accident waiting to happen.
What the hell does "micathermic" mean? Surprisingly, this word does not exist at dictionary.com! I got a semi-description of it when I google'd it, but it's from a site that's trying to sell you a product, so it's not exactly a technical description of what's going on. As far as I can tell, it has something to do with heating things via infrared radiation. I'm going to guess that somehow a piece of ceramic or steel is heated using this infrared radiation, and then convection carries the heat out, but I'm not sure since I can't get a really good description of how it works.
Not surprisingly though, almost all of the hits for "micathermic" came from sites in the UK. Why is that the Brits always have the better knowledge of things, even though we seem to invent them over here? Their photography mags, music mags, computer mags, non-fiction, fiction, even films, all seem to be better than their American counterparts. What the heck?! Are we really the ignorant, uncultured, rebellious hooligans, kicked out of Britain 200 years ago, that the rest of the world thinks we are??
In any case, I'll probably try and find one for a reasonable price and try it out, since I don't like those "electric-coil-heated-up-with-a-grill-in-front" heaters that only heat the area right in front of them and are an accident waiting to happen.
# posted by Chris @ 12:49 AM 
