BookmarkHow do Thermoses work?
Hot or cold, Thermos keeps it fresh.
Your love for the Thermos bottle started simply, with mom filling that clever Thermos with soups or juices for those daily school lunches. And as you grew, so did the Thermos. Today it not only holds our coffees, our soups, or cappuccinos beneath its Thermos plastic seals, but now the Thermos company and other innovative designers are using the technology for Thermos grills, cookers, and food storage.
With the evolution of that simple, lunchbox Thermos to today's sleek, stainless steel models, still remains the age-old question: How does a Thermos work?
100-year-old technology and terms:
The first vacuum-sealed bottle was created in 1892, then put to commercial use in 1904 with the creation of the Thermos Company. Here are some terms to understand the technology:
Therme /Thermo: The Greek root of the word Thermos, meaning heat.
Vacuum: A lack of atoms or air, needed for preserving temperature.
Heat Transfer: Two objects with different temperatures will transfer heat atoms when put together, until both objects are the same temperature.
Insulation: Whether in foam or vacuum-sealed form, insulation retains the temperature of whatever it's surrounding, whether hot or cold.
Thermoelectric: Using electricity in conjunction with the flow of heat.
Basic thermos parts
Understanding how it works means nothing without understanding a Thermos' parts:
Cap: The top of every Thermos bottle screws in, keeping heat from slipping out.
Glass envelope: Inside all Thermos bottles is a glass bottle, surrounded by a vacuum. Glass helps with preventing heat transfer, and is even more effective when silvered, as most of the insides of Thermoses are.
Vacuum insulation layer: Many Thermoses have this layer outside of the glass layer, in between the outermost portion of the inner wall, and the inner portion of the outer wall. Together with the glass layer, this retains heat or cold longer than any other insulation created, by reducing heat transfer and insulating what's inside.
Case: What you see is the encasing, which protects the glass bottle and vacuum. Cases come in all forms, shapes and sizes: stainless steel, plastic.
Bringing it all together
The result of that vacuum-flask invention more than 100 years ago was a slew of thermo-technology, spanning beyond that Aladdin Thermos full of soup in your child's lunchbox.
Today, products such as thermo spas, the ultimate in hydrotherapy and spa systems, and Thermos gas grills brilliantly marry thermo electrics, and Thermos heat retention technologies.The technology is used in refrigeration advances, such as Thermo King refrigerated trucks and trailers, used to transport foods to your grocery.
The simplicity of Thermos technology is something you now use every day, whether it's packing your child's lunch in a Thermos Funtainer, filling your Stanley Thermos for a camping weekend away, or cooking out on a Thermos gas grill.
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