Learning How Hairdryers Actually Work
Look Younger - Beauty & StyleThe morning habits of most people go something like this: take a shower, grab the blow dryer, turn it on, and use the heat to remove the moisture from the hair, and get ready to face the rest of the day. People use blow dryers for a number of reasons, one of which is to avoid going outside with wet hair, if the weather is cold. Doing this can result in getting sick. The majority of users, however, most likely never think about the inner workings of blow dryers, how the machines dry their hair, and why they don’t cause burns to the scalp or hair.
Blow dryers are basically easy to understand. Two major components, air and heat, are important to allowing the appliance to work properly. Essentially, a blow dryer works by forcing heat and air together inside the dryer. The heated air is then funneled through the appliance in a single direction and out the end.
There is a heating element inside the hairdryer which produces heat very quickly but it is of no usefulness if the air remains in the unit, making it very hot to the touch and hampering its performance.
The second major part is the fan, which is run by a small motor which causes the fan to rotate and push the hot air from the dryer, allowing your hair to be quickly and easily dried. With the majority of hairdryers you also have the ability to turn that heating element off so it blows cold air if you want it to.
There will also probably be a controller that will allow you to determine just how much hot air you want the appliance to produce. If the component that generates the heat gets hotter, the air that comes out the end of the appliance will also be hotter.
A basic heating coil regulates the level of heat being generated, and when the dryer is connected and turned on, it’s those coiled wires that warm and get hot. The coil, or nichrome wire, is created from the alloy metals of nickel and chromium, which can also be found in a lot of other household in the kitchen, such as kettles and toasters.
Nickel and chromium are superb conductors of heat, while nichrome wire is a lousy conductor for electricity, so it’s the alloy that’s heat resistant, which in turn allows it to become heated – and that gives you the hot air from the dryer.
Eliza has written much more on hair dryers, check out her other articles at hair dryer diffuser or T3 blow dryer.
Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 3:25 am and is filed under Look Younger - Beauty & Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
