wunder beta

🍳 How heat moves in a pan

Conduction, convection and radiation, settled in a skillet: why copper reacts instantly, cast iron forgives, and wet food refuses to pass boiling.

4
lessons
~20 min
to learn
🔬 Science
subject
Adults
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. Three ways heat gets inDistinguish conduction, convection and radiation, and identify which is doing the work in a given cooking situation.Heat reaches food by contact, by moving fluid, or by infrared light, and every technique in the kitchen is a way of adjusting one of the three.
  2. What the pan is made ofExplain how conductivity and thermal mass together determine how a pan heats, holds and recovers.Conductivity decides how evenly a pan heats and how quickly it responds; mass decides whether it can survive the arrival of cold food, which is why clad and cast-iron pans exist.
  3. The water problemApply the boiling ceiling, latent heat and the Leidenfrost effect to what happens on and inside food in a pan.Water pins any wet surface near 100 °C and costs enormous energy to drive off, so cooking splits into a stalled wet interior and a free-running dry surface.
  4. Getting the heat where you want itUse preheating, pan choice, induction and carryover to control where and when heat arrives.Control comes from reserves and matching: preheat for recovery rather than for a reading, match pan to burner, and remember that food keeps cooking after it leaves the heat.

Questions this course answers

Why does oven air at 200 °C feel survivable for a moment while the metal shelf at the same temperature burns instantly?

Temperature says how hot something is; conductivity says how fast it can deliver that heat. Metal delivers it hundreds of times faster than air, so the same temperature produces a very different injury.

Order these pan materials from best conductor of heat to worst

Copper leads at around 400 watts per metre per kelvin, aluminium follows near 240, cast iron sits around 50, and stainless steel trails near 16 — a twenty-five-fold spread from top to bottom.

Compared with heating a gram of water from 20 °C to boiling, roughly how many times more energy does it take to boil that gram away entirely?

Heating takes about 334 joules per gram; vaporising takes about 2,257 joules per gram, close to seven times as much. This is why a sauce reduces slowly and why steam scalds so badly.

Why will an aluminium pan usually not work on an induction hob?

Induction works by driving electric currents inside a ferromagnetic base with a changing magnetic field. If a magnet will not stick to the pan, the field has nothing to grip and the pan stays cold.

Match each kitchen action to the mode of heat transfer it is exploiting

Cooking technique is almost entirely the manipulation of these three routes: improve contact, move the fluid, or change your distance from a radiant source.

In your own words, why can the inside of a roast stay pink while its surface turns dark brown in the very same oven?

Water sets a hard temperature ceiling wherever it remains liquid. Only the dried surface is free to climb past it, so browning is always a surface event.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • [object Object]
  • [object Object]
  • [object Object]
  • [object Object]
  • [object Object]

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

Related Science courses

🍳How Cast Iron Pans Work☕How a thermos keeps a drink hot🍦The science of ice cream🔪Knives: metallurgy, edges and why sharp is safe🥩The Maillard reaction: why browned food tastes better🧅Why onions make you cry, and how to stop it🍝The science of pasta: starch, semolina and al dente🧂Food preservation: salting, smoking, canning, freezing

Wunder is a personalized learn-anything platform — tell it any topic and it builds a beautiful, fact-checked course in minutes, with narration, a knowledge check, and a college-style University track.

Browse more Science courses · All topics · Home

© 2026 Wunder Learning LLC · Terms & Privacy