Exploding Plates: A Little Cooking Tip

June 28 2005 – 12:58pm

For anyone out there, such as single men, without much experience in the kitchen, I have a small but very valuable bit of wisdom to impart upon you. If you are using your stove, do not put any plates on any of the burners. There is a small chance that you have turned on a burner other than the one you intended – maybe even the burner you have placed your plate on. This will result in a loud sound that sounds like an explosion, likely caused by the aforementioned plate exploding all over your kitchen. Now that you have this wisdom, you will of course, not ever make this mistake, and if you do, you will understand what has caused this well enough to not absent-mindedly attempt to remove what remains of the plate from the burner on your stove, thus burning your fingerprints off.

Use a wet paper towel – or many wet paper towels – to clean up all of the microscopic porcelain shards from your kitchen floor. As much of a housekeeping retard you are, I probably don’t have to tell you why you don’t want these on your floor.

If you would like to design a stove with controls placed in such a way as to make such an error less likely, please consult Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things.