What happens if you leave an empty pot on an open stove?

Question

An empty cooking pot on high temperature.

How long would it take until something drastic happened?

What would happen to the pot?

Just a random question that popped out. Hehe.

Answer 1

Depends on what its made of and what the handle is made of.  Most metal pots will simply get very hot.  A stove top is not hot enough to melt typical pot metals.  The handle, on the other hand could melt off if it is made of some cheaper material.

Just a guess but the handles may burn and/or melt within 10 minutes.  The pot should survive.

Answer 2

if it is an aluminum pot on an electric stove you can melt the pot, short out the burner coil and trip the breaker/start a fire. i fell asleep once while boiling water to cook pasta and melted the pot.

Answer 3

Total meltdown, mess and it may even fry the stove's wiring so it's not just the pot at stake not to mention the risks involved if someone tries to clean up too soon.

The Muse

Answer 4

cookware is designed to be heated to very high temperatures for very long times, so it would just get really hot. and depending on what type of metal it is, it might discolor from the heat, it shouldnt melt and there should be no "toxic vapors" given off, remember, this stuff is MADE to be heated

Answer 5

It would get hot, it would burn and you would have ONE BIG MESS to clean up.

nfd♥

Answer 6

True story.  My brothers mother-in-law put an aluminum kettle on her electric stove with the power turned up to high, she left her house and forgot to turn it off.  She came back home hours later and the pot had completely melted and the liquid aluminum had dripped down to the area under the heating element and had formed a sheet of what looked like aluminum foil.

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Electric stoves can reach temperatures much higher than a gas stove.  You can hold a penny in the fire of a gas stove and it will turn red at best but it will remain intact.  Put that same penny on an electric stove element and it will be turned into molten copper withing a minute or two.

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Answer 7

first off , any coating on it will burn off and give off toxic vapors and next the pot will melt and possibly short out the burner . in other words it will make a mess.

Answer 8

It depends on the pot and on the stove.  Cooking used to be done in cast iron pots on cast iron wood-burning cookstoves.  This is still the best way if you have time to set it up right.

The empty cast iron pot would get very hot on the wood stove, but it would never melt.

On the other hand, if you set a thin aluminum saucepan or skillet empty on a gas or electric range (turned up high), you will have all the trouble you need in about two minutes.  The people who said it would not melt have never been in the kitchen, I suppose.  It is one of the most common household accidents.

On an electric range, the melting aluminum pan can cause an electrical short and start a fire; on a gas range, it can spread the gas flames and set fire to surrounding objects.

If you melted an aluminum pot with a non-stick coating and/or an enamel finish, you could get a release of a small amount of toxic fumes from those materials.

A thick aluminum pan might take 30 minutes or more to melt, but it would.  A gas flame is hotter than an electric "burner" and a pot will melt faster on gas.

At the same time, the good old cast iron pan will get very hot, (like red hot), but it will not melt.  It would take an oxy-acetylene torch to melt the cast iron pot.

You can melt a copper pot over a gas flame, but not an electric range element.  It would take a while.

Moral of the story:  be careful in the kitchen at all times.  Don't cook if you are sleepy.