For more than a year, there’s been this ridiculous rumor that the numbers on the dial of a toaster are actually “minutes,” not “levels of toastiness.”
Many people on the Internet say their minds have absolutely been blown by this seemingly revolutionary knowledge.
So this insane new piece of information essentially means that turning your toaster’s dial to 1 will toast your bread for exactly 1 minute.
Easy to remember, right? Sure…except that it’s not true!
This toaster rumor began making waves on social media in late 2014 and it almost immediately started spreading like wildfire.
That’s why Tom Scott decided to try out the theory for himself, using four different toasters—starting from cheapest to most expensive—to prove that the numbers on the dial do not, in fact, correlate to minutes.
After setting each dial to “2” at the exact same time, Scott pulled out his timer to see if any of the toasters actually popped at 2 minutes.
Unsurprisingly, Scott was right all along—the numbers on a toaster definitely don’t translate to minutes.
As Scott explains in the video below, toasters are not made with timing chips. Instead, they have a bi-metallic strip: two pieces of metal that expand at different rates depending on the heat.
The dial simply changes how far the strip has to curve before it triggers the toast to pop up.
In the end, Scott leaves us with a great question to think about: How would a dial with minutes even help?
You’d still have to play around with the toaster to get the perfect level of “toastiness,” especially if you’re using different types of bread.
See the full experiment for yourself in the video below now!
Video Credit: Tom Scott via YouTube.com
