This morning I ran further tests on the infra-red heater.
My setup was scoped across a 0.01 Ohm shunt resistor to measure the current. Previously I used a Kill-A-Watt meter.
I measured the current and there are no spikes shown, the voltage and current waveforms are identical and in phase as you would expect from a resistive heater.
The strange thing is when I use a magnetic pickup coil into the scope, I get a very small 60 Hz. sine wave with a huge positive and negative going spike that I cannot account for. It dies out at around 11.07 amps leaving a small sine wave when the audible sound dies out.
The questions are:
Why does the extremely spiky waveform show up with the external magnetic pickup coil, but no such spike is shown when using the current shunt resistor.
Why does the spike diminish completely around 11.07 amps, right when the heater stops emitting the audible buzz and enters the glow phase?
I urge anyone with a heater to replicate this experiment.
I assume the heater wire in which the current flows is coiled. I guess, before the current flows the heater wires are in a room temperature, have a definite length to this temperature. When switched on, the current rises, and the wires expend because of rising temperature, and the opposing magnetic fields. As the sine wave goes on, current flow changing directions, the wires vibrate back and force with less and less amplitude, until they reach the glowing temperature, where there will be no more movements. I guess the back vibration when the current falling, because of the fast heat dissipation, so related to the material temperature related length change. I guess it's all happening because the wires need several AC cycle to reach the temperature, where the heat generated by the previous cycles, doesn't dissipate fast enough until the next current rise coming. When the glowing temperature reached, the will be no temperature related movements. The pick up coil may pick up the field spikes generated by the current carrying vibrating wires. You cannot measure with a shunt resistor those spikes, because your measuring point should have in an outside reference frame, from where the movement of the wires (which are now moving magnetic field sources) could adding to the flowing current generated waveform. I could be totally wrong.
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"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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