• Kiosade@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      How… did they even end up anywhere near the laundry machines in the first place?

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Most plastic doesn’t melt below the boiling point of water. It’s not intuitive that a dryer can get a lot hotter than that.

      Only babies who don’t even know what vodka is would make his mistake.

      • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why isn’t it intuitive that a device designed to evaporate water quickly gets hotter than the boiling point of water

            • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Yes, but you seem to be forgetting that we’re talking about the difference between room temperature and melting plastic. That’s hundreds of degrees F. Even twenty degrees makes a substantial difference for drying water.

              It’s fully within reason to expect a dryer to be less hot than melting plastic unless it’s a gas dryer. Even then, many clothes are literally made of plastic. Nylon? Radon? Plastic. It’s totally reasonable to expect a dryer to not melt typical kinds of clothes. (though at least nylon’s melting point is significantly higher than some other kinds of plastic)

              • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                And you’re forgetting that water needs huge amounts of heat to evaporate. The heat capacity of plastic is rather small in comparison, so a machine capable of quickly vaporizing water also has the power to melt crappy thin plastic.

                Modern dryers usually have a safety thermostat, but lint buildup is still a big fire hazard, so there are obviously temperatures in significant excess of boiling here.