Electrical engineering in everyday life

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Electrical engineering in everyday life

Home appliances are electrical/mechanical machines which accomplish some household functions, such as cooling/heating, cooking or cleaning. Home appliances can be classified into:

• Major appliances, or white goods

• Small appliances,

• Consumer electronics, or brown goods in regions with UK influence

This division is also noticeable in the maintenance and repair of these kinds of products. Brown goods usually require high technical knowledge and skills (which get more complex with time, such as going from a soldering iron to a hot-air soldering station), while white goods may need more practical skills and «brute force» to manipulate the devices and heavy tools required to repair them.

Given a broad usage, the domestic application attached to «home appliance» is tied to the definition of appliance as «an instrument or device designed for a particular use or function». More specifically, Collins dictionary defines «home appliance» as: «devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking.» The broad usage, afforded to the definition allows for nearly any device intended for domestic use to be a home appliance, including consumer electronics as well as stoves, refrigerators, toasters and air conditioners to light bulbs and water well pumps.

While many appliances have existed for centuries, the self-contained electric or gas powered appliances are a uniquely American innovation that emerged in the twentieth century. The development of these appliances is tied the disappearance of full-time domestic servants and the desire to reduce the time consuming activities in pursuit of more recreational time. In the early 1900s, electric and gas appliances included washing machines, water heaters, refrigerators and sewing machines. The invention of Earl Richardson's small electric clothes iron in 1903 gave a small initial boost to the home appliance industry. In the Post-World War II economic expansion, the domestic use of dishwashers, and clothes dryers were part of a shift for convenience. Increasing discretionary income was reflected by a rise in miscellaneous home appliances.

In America during the 1980s, the industry shipped $1.5 billion worth of goods each year and employed over 14,000 workers, with revenues doubling between 1982 and 1990 to $3.3 billion. Throughout this period companies merged and acquired one another to reduce research and production costs and eliminate competitors, resulting in anti-trust legislation.

The United States Department of Energy reviews compliance with the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, which required manufacturers to reduce the energy consumption of the appliances by 25% every five years.

In the 1990s, the appliance industry was very consolidated, with over 90% of the products being sold by just five companies. For example, in 1991, dishwasher manufacturing market share was split between General Electric with 40% market share, Whirlpool with 31% market share, Electrolux with 20% market share, Maytag with 7% market share and Thermador with just 2% of market share.

Major appliances, also known as white goods, comprise major household appliances and may include: air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers, drying cabinets, freezers, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, water heaters, washing machines, trash compactors, microwave ovens and induction cookers. White goods were typically painted or enameled white, and many of them still are.

Small appliances are typically small household electrical machines, also very useful and easily carried and installed. Some are classified with white goods, and relate to heating and cooling such as: fans and window mounted air conditioners, and heaters such as space heaters, ceramic heaters, gas heaters, kerosene heaters, and fan heaters. Yet another category is used in the kitchen, including: juicers, electric mixers, meat grinders, coffee grinders, deep fryers, herb grinders, food processors, electric kettles, waffle irons, coffee makers, blenders and dough blenders, rice cookers, toasters and exhaust hoods.

Entertainment and information appliances such as: home electronics, TV sets, CD, VCRs and DVD players, camcorders, still cameras, clocks, alarm clocks, video game consoles, HiFi and home cinema, telephones and answering machines are classified as «brown goods». Some such appliances were traditionally finished with genuine or imitation wood. This has become rare but the name has stuck, even for goods that are unlikely ever to have had a wooden case (e.g. camcorders).

There is a trend of networking home appliances together, and combining their controls and key functions. For instance, energy distribution could be managed more evenly so that when a washing machine is on, an oven can go into a delayed start mode, or vice versa. Or, a washing machine and clothes dryer could share information about load characteristics (gentle/normal, light/full), and synchronize their finish times so the wet laundry does not have to wait before being put in the dryer.

Additionally, some manufacturers of home appliances are quickly beginning to place hardware that enables Internet connectivity in home appliances to allow for remote control, automation, communication with other home appliances, and more functionality. Internet-connected home appliances were especially prevalent during recent Consumer Electronic Showevents.

Appliance recycling consists of dismantling waste home appliances and scrapping their parts for reuse. The main types of appliances that are recycled are T.V.s, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and computers. It involves disassembly, removal of hazardous components and destruction of the equipment to recover materials, generally by shredding, sorting and grading.

Appliances are household devices designed to assist with the performance of a task. Electrical appliances are those that receive power from a permanently attached or detachable cord that plugs into a wall outlet. Electric devices that provide entertainment are not generally considered appliances. Electric appliances are often found in the kitchen, but are also used in other parts of the house.

Major appliances are those that are fixtures in the home, and are not portable. The oven and the stove, the appliances where food is cooked, can come as two separate units or can be a single installation. They are not always electric appliances as some run on gas. The water heater is another appliance in the home that can run on electricity or on gas. It heats the water for bathtubs and showers and for other uses throughout the home. Most homes have a single-unit refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen to keep food fresh. They may also have a separate freezer in the garage or basement for the storage of frozen foods that do not fit in the smaller combined unit. The washer and dryer in which the laundry is done are other major electric appliances found in the home.

The kitchen is also filled with a number of small appliances that are used every day. These are those items that are portable and sit on the counter or the table. Some smaller appliances, like blenders and juicers, come with an electric unit base that can hold different attachments that do different things. The blender or juicer base can operate a canister that blends liquids, another that blends dry ingredients and even act as a food processor to chop fruit and vegetables. The coffee maker is a small electrical appliance that gets heavy use in many kitchens. Other homes bake bread in a bread machine that stirs, kneads and bakes loaves of bread. The toaster can come as a unit that simply toasts slices of bread, but it is also available as a toaster oven that cooks smaller meals as a substitute for the regular oven. For quick cooking, most homes also have a countertop or attached microwave oven.

Some smaller appliances are designed for personal care rather than cooking food. Women will use a blow dryer and a curling iron to style their hair as they get ready for the day. Some people use an electric toothbrush in the bathroom as well. While some men shave with a standard blade razor, some prefer to use an electric razor when trimming their mustache and beard. An alarm clock is quite often found on the nightstand table to help people wake up on time in the morning. An iron is another electric appliance that comes into play when a person is getting ready to head out for the day as they look to get rid of those wrinkles in their clothes.

A domestic robot is a type of service robot, an autonomous robot that is primarily used for household chores, but may also be used for education, entertainment or therapy. Thus far, there are only a few limited models, though speculators, such as Bill Gates, have suggested that they could become more common in the future. While most domestic robots are simplistic, some are connected to WiFi home networks or smart environments and are autonomous to a high degree. There were an estimated 3,540,000 service robots in use in 2006, compared with an estimated 950,000 industrial robots.

Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. It involves the control and automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers. Wi-Fi is often used for remote monitoring and control. Home devices, when remotely monitored and controlled via the Internet, are an important constituent of the Internet of Things. Modern systems generally consist of switches and sensors connected to a central hub sometimes called a «gateway» from which the system is controlled with a user interface that is interacted either with a wall-mounted terminal, mobile phone software, tablet computer or a web interface, often but not always via Internet cloud services.

While there are many competing vendors, there are very few worldwide accepted industry standards and the smart home space is heavily fragmented. Popular communications protocol for products include X10, Ethernet, RS485, 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth LE (BLE), ZigBee and Z-Wave, or other proprietary protocols all of which are incompatible with each other. Manufacturers often prevent independent implementations by withholding documentation and by litigation.

The home automation market was worth US$5.77 billion in 2013, predicted to reach a market value of US$12.81 billion by the year 2020.

Domestic technology is the incorporation of applied science into the home. There are many aspects of domestic technology. On one level, there are home appliances, home automation and other devices commonly used in the home, such as clothes dryers and washing machines. These things are itemized below. On another level, domestic technology recognizes the use of applied science to construct homes to achieve a particular goal, such as energy efficiency or self-sufficiency. For more information, read about self-sufficient homes. It has been claimed that domestic technology has led to decreases in the time people spend on household work, although the factual basis of this claim is disputed (Bittman et al., 2004). There are many technologies now routinely used around modern homes, itemized below:

• Air conditioning

• Central heating

• Cleaning

• Clothes dryer

• Broom

• Dishwasher

• Mop

• Sink

• Shower

• Bath

• Vacuum cleaner

• Washing machine

• Computer

• PC

• Food preparation

• Barbecue

• Breadmaker

• Blender

• Faucet

• Food processor

• Microwave oven

• Mixer

• Oven

• Food storage

• Can

• Canning

• Refrigerator

• Home maintenance

• Groundskeeping equipment

• Garden tools

• Paint sprayer

• Knitting machine

• Plumbing

• Power generation

• Solar cell

• Windmill

• Telephone

• Window

A stove is an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated, or to heat the stove itself and items placed on it. Stoves are generally used for cooking and heating purposes.

• Aprovecho - Aprovecho Research Center has worked on designs for cook stoves, primarily for use in developing countries. They are best known for the Rocket stove, developed by their technical director Dr. Larry Winiarski.

• Bachelor griller - a countertop kitchen appliance with which a single person can grill, bake, boil or roast small portions of food

• Bamboo stove - an historical stove made in China in the late 14th century, it included bamboo to form the frame of the stove. The sides were cemented with clay and the inside walls and the ring on top were iron. It was about a foot tall.

• Beverage-can stove - a homemade, ultralight portable stove. The simple design is usually made entirely from aluminium cans and burns alcohol.

• BioLite

• Ceramic stove or tile stove

• Chambers stove - a generic name for several different kitchen cooking appliances sold under the Chambers brand name from 1912 to approximately 1988. Their ranges and stand-alone ovens were known for their patented insulation methods, which enabled them to cook on retained heat with the fuel turned off.

• Clean-burning stove - a stove with reduced toxic emissions. The term commonly refers to wood-burning stoves for domestic heating, although it is also applied to cooking stoves.

References

household electrical mechanical

1. http://www.ehow.com/list_7243421_list-electric-appliances.html

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_appliance

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_robot

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_technology

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stoves

Размещено на Allbest.ru