My wife has all but destroyed our pots and pans teflon coating, so I bought her a new set for the holidays.
Shes already scratched one of the pans.
I propose a reactive teflon coating be sprayed into all new pots and pans. The new coating will be enviroment aware, and when a hazardous metallic object gets too near the slick black coating, a non-letal shock will be administered through the aformentioned object and into the offending cook.
Any electronics can be stored in the handle of the cookware, with insulated wires running to the teflon. Grounding can be acheived through the pan-handle, as harsh scrapers generally use the handle to acheive maximum leverage.
Over time, the mind will be trained to not scrap noodles from the pan with a fork, but rather, a safe plastic spoon.
Charging of the system can be done while the cookware is in use on the hot stove. Any suggestions? Alternativly, the heating coils could serve as the source-voltage for those more severe pan abusers.-- Bluewraith, Feb 02 2007 Teflon pans are overrated. Get a cast-iron skillet for below $20, season it, and never look back. Maybe you can buy a proper wooden spatula with the money you save.-- jutta, Feb 02 2007 I often worry about the amount of teflon that gets ingested.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 02 2007 So, you're going to electrocute your wife while she is carrying a hot pan? [-]-- pertinax, Feb 02 2007 There's one big flaw in your cunning plan.
Teflon is a trade name for Polytetrafluoroethylene. PTFE is a plastic. Plastics are non-conductive.
I'd like to see you get it to pass a current ;-)-- webfishrune, Feb 02 2007 New types of Teflon coatings combine Teflon with ceramic particles. These are much more resistant to damage.-- ldischler, Feb 02 2007 Odd, the wife didn't think the idea was that hot either...-- Bluewraith, Feb 03 2007 [Bluewraith], perhaps you could get your wife to wear a collar that administers electric shock when she does _anything_ that might result in damage to your property.
Although, a collar that electric shocks your wife might result in more damage to your property than you bargained for...-- m_Al_com, Feb 03 2007 where did I put my frying pan?-- po, Feb 03 2007 I guess once she's scratched through the teflon, there won't be anything to prevent the conduction of shocks.
You might use a thermoelectic generator to provide power, but I think pavlovian training will actually go against you here. lemme tell you about an experiment I read up on in psychology.
Rats were put in a special cage, with a treat dispenser that they could actuate via a metal plate. The metal plate was also capable of shocking the rats.
Rats which were never shocked quickly learned to push the pedal, and did so whenever they were hungry.
Rats which were always shocked associated pain with food, and pushed the pedal only when they felt like they were starving.
Rats which were allowed to learn to use the pedal without shocks, and which then were alternately shocked, and not shocked in a somewhat random pattern became wary of the pedal, but after they pushed it and did not recieve a shock, they would go into a pedal pushing frenzy, often emptying all the possible treats from the machine, and flooding their cage, even when shocking started to occur again.
As you did not begin with these shocking pans, and as your wife will only be shocked when she scratches all the way through the finish (if that, since the batteries may need to charge up, or they might possibly even melt) she would have an experience similar to the third group of rats, and could quite possibly go into a pan scraping frenzy whenever the system failed, which would rapidly lead to a nice set of bare aluminum pans.
All the same, I'm in a certain mood, and I think I might like to electrocute my insignificant other, mainly because she's actually a stalker, and there's a cute little thing around that I'd much prefer, without the reactive teflon pans. (+)-- ye_river_xiv, Feb 03 2007 If she is so enamored of using metal implements on her pans, perhaps you should stop buying her teflon? Just a thought.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Feb 05 2007 She'll learn to turn the pan around and hit you with the back of it, preserving the surface.-- lurch, Feb 05 2007 Just make it sound a buzzer instead. In fact, you could do this and make it sound an alarm before the teflon is even touched by the metal, if you use the capacitance between the pan and cook as a measure. But really, I don't quite see how anyone could forget to use plastic on non-stick.....-- thsn_idrc, Feb 06 2007 random, halfbakery