Can it Fry an Egg?

Hi,

I've been wondering what kinds of flashlights can fry eggs or do other pyrotechnics? I'd like to get a flashlight with some amazing brightness, and good throw, but I don't like the idea of a flashlight that burns out in 5 minutes like the thing from wicked lasers.

I'm not even sure what kind of flashlight is best for this kind of thing, much less what the minimum power ought to be, since I just got into LEDs and I've been curious about the HID lights, since they remind me of A Canticle for Leibowitz - a novel I had to read for a Sci-Fi class.

The problem with paper burning/egg frying with a flashlight is that it's a result of inefficiency; the heat that is coming off your emitter is energy that is not being turned into light - flashaholics don't like that. Wicked Laser's The Torch is a good example of this, as it has a uselessly crumpled "reflector" and a makes no attempt to throw a coherent beam - it works great for burning things but doesn't work as a flashlight.

Some of the larger "big gun" lights and higher-wattage Mag hot-wires can easily exceed 200 degrees F at the bezel; I know when I'm out in the desert with my HID on cool nights, after it's been on for a few minutes I can turn it off and hold the bezel near my face to stay warm. While all this extra heat energy seems entertaining at first, it's not nearly as impressive as what can be done with the actual light, like lighting up objects a half mile away, lighting up the underside of clouds, etc.

I saw someone with what looked like three LEDs or HID tubes arranged into a triangle in a flashlight and I was wondering if a setup like that would get warm enough to fry an egg. I'm not looking for a pure IR flashlight, I still want one with some killer throw, but I'm hoping a flashlight in the 1200-5000 lumen range exists that can meet these needs. It would also be useful to know what the smallest/weakest flashlights are that can also fit these criteria. Then again, I could just be overly optimistic. I've seen some high power flashlights with 90+ minutes duration at 500+ lumens, and was hoping I could have a multipurpose tool with similar minutes of "cooking" time. I don't know enough about flashlights to know if such a product exists, but I think it would be nice (if idealistic) to have a very powerful flashlight that lasts up to 90 minutes and can also cook oatmeal on a camping trip.

You have to take into consideration the amount of energy that's being used to produce both heat and light; a flashlight creates quite a bit of heat along with its light, but then that means it isn't very efficient for heating things. A small electric stove hooked up to a car battery uses at least 99% of its energy to create heat, so that option has a huge advantage over a flashlight. Even better is an option that requires zero energy - a tiny magnesium firestarter and a pile of tinder will create a source of heat that's sufficient for cooking for yourself, for everyone in a camp, or burning down the entire forest, with no energy input needed at all. Being able to build a proper campfire using only a two dollar keychain implement and your wits is a lot more impressive than cooking with a multi-thousand dollar spotlight inefficiently draining thousands of milliamp hours in electricity.

To really get heat you need a high power incan light, typically a hot wire. Led lights does not have enough IR in the beam to really heat things up.

My 50W HID can evaporate water on the lens,after it has turned on for 15 minutes

jh333233 said:

My 50W HID can evaporate water on the lens,after it has turned on for 15 minutes

Click to expand...

That sounds good enough to me.

If I could have an alternative bulb/HID part that can swap out and use the same power supply to produce more heat than visible light, that might be cool too.

The one with low lumen efficiency suits you
Because the power either go light or heat

Could get a piece of steel sheet weld on legs that hold it about 3 inches above the lense of your hid light and paint the underside of the steel sheet with matte black high temprature paint. This changes the light energy into heat rather than just using the waste heat. you can use it as a hotplate or put a saucpan on it. This way you can have an efficient bulb for seeing things and you'll get more heat than with the waste heat from inefficient bulbs. And due to the higher efficiency you might get enough runtime to do some proper cooking. Could have a fried breakfast on one charge versus 1 fried egg on a charge with an inefficient bulb

Didn't mean to post twice. Cpf broke when I was typing the first message and I didn't think it had sent.

YES you can

S.