Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Do stains on hotplates affect performance?

bob800 - 28-9-2010 at 12:26

I found a reasonably-priced Corning PC-320 on ebay, but there's some stains on the plate. Do stains on hotplates usually smell\affect performance? Attached is a photo of it:






stains.png - 239kB

[Edited on 28-9-2010 by bob800]

crazyboy - 28-9-2010 at 15:40

It's fine.

MagicJigPipe - 28-9-2010 at 17:26

The only time it will affect performance noticeably is if there is a significant amount of debris that has significantly different thermal characteristics from that of the hotplate material. I can think of no other mechanism through which performance would be affected by "stains".

I have a hotplate similar to this one and it is great! It is the same kind my school uses and they are certainly built to last. (Just don't spill concentrated acid/base or other extremely reactive chemicals through the vent holes and if you do, disassemble it IMMEDIATELY and wipe it down with a damp cloth soaked in an appropriate neutralizing solution)

Of course this holds true with other hotplate models as well.

Now that I think about it, this is perhaps a design flaw because I have a VWR 4x4 hotplate stirrer that doesn't have vents that spills can get into easily.

Yours doesn't seem to have the slightly rounded base with vents, though.

[Edited on 9-29-2010 by MagicJigPipe]

Ozone - 28-9-2010 at 19:10

NO. Looks typical to me.

Cheers,

O3