Common kitchen item Americans don’t have

IF YOU thought Donald Trump being voted in was shocking, try wrapping your head around the latest bombshell from the United States.

If you thought you were going to sit down and have a nice cup of tea with your friend from the US, you are sorely mistaken.

IF YOU thought Donald Trump being voted in was shocking, try wrapping your head around the latest bombshell from the United States.

A significant number of Americans don’t know what an electric kettle is.

That’s right. Wander in to a domestic kitchen in America and you’re more likely to find a hand gun than an electric kettle.*

This little nugget of knowledge has just been picked up on Twitter and people are losing their minds over it.

It’s stunning to us because we were colonised by the Brits who love nothing more than a cup of tea (or a Spice Girls reunion). So to a certain extent we have adopted the tradition of flicking the button on the kettle for a nice cuppa. As such the concept of not having a kettle seems terribly quaint to us.

There are delightful tales doing the rounds about Americans picking up an electric kettle when they’re in a foreign country, not understanding how it works, and putting it on the stove to heat it up (thus melting the bottom).

‘Why does my tea taste like burnt plastic? Oh.’

Twitter was not going to take this news lying down:

Consider our minds collectively blown.

As a side note, that is a truly amazing Twitter handle.

In all the movies and tv shows I've watched, I've never seen an American use an electric kettle.

These things keep me up at night.

— Finders Peepers (@Thumbsofclay) February 18, 2017

Part of the reason electric kettles are such a rarity in the US is that most of the population drinks coffee instead of tea, and the heating element for coffee is often combined in those drip coffee machines they tend to use at home.

You know those contraptions you always see in TV sitcoms?

This is what they fill your coffee cup with in a diner. We know this because of the magic of television.

This is all fair enough, but how do they boil water for life’s other necessities (such as hot water bottles and making jelly)?

Apparently stovetop kettles are the norm, or they boil the water in the microwave. Which many people find profoundly shocking.

Is it true that Americans rarely own kettles and boil their tea water in the microwave? Wtf is wrong with that country?! #heathens #tea

— Lucie Sisakova (@LucieSisakova) March 1, 2017

This Twitter user also had a solid theory alternative theory on how they boil water:

@rhodopsintea @thomas_violence @MrReidOrg actually, they fire into the water with a semi-automatic rifle

— so-called bog dad (@AynRandy) March 8, 2017

A science-y type wrote a blog post explaining that as a concept, electric kettles are not as effective in the US as they are in the UK or Australia.

“The voltage of mains electricity varies from country to country: the majority of countries use between 200 and 240 volts, but a small minority (most notably the US, Canada and Japan) use between 100 and 127 volts,” writes physicist Mr Reid.

“To raise the temperature of one litre of water from 15C to boiling at 100C requires a little bit over 355 kilojoules of energy. An ‘average’ kettle in the UK runs at about 2800W and in the US at about 1500W; if we assume that both kettles are 100 per cent efficient than a UK kettle supplying 2800 joules per second will take 127 seconds to boil and a US kettle supplying 1500 J/s will take 237 seconds, more than a minute and a half longer. This is such a problem that many households in the US still use an old-fashioned stovetop kettle.”

And that right there is about as much science as our brains can handle.

Good night.

* This is in no way evidence-based.