12-20-2016, 02:00 PM
Thanks guys!
RE: the heat - it's a good question. I haven't had a problem (so far) - but it's possible those have been places where the amount of actual energy dissipation is much less than the rated wattage (also, large values seem to drift much more). I suspect that some heat must be dissipated via the leads (18ga wire) - air + polystyrene seems like it would be a pretty good heat insulator.
According to Wikipedia Polystyrene starts to flow around 100°C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
It's probably worth doing some sort of controlled experiment to measure at some point.
RE: the heat - it's a good question. I haven't had a problem (so far) - but it's possible those have been places where the amount of actual energy dissipation is much less than the rated wattage (also, large values seem to drift much more). I suspect that some heat must be dissipated via the leads (18ga wire) - air + polystyrene seems like it would be a pretty good heat insulator.
According to Wikipedia Polystyrene starts to flow around 100°C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
It's probably worth doing some sort of controlled experiment to measure at some point.
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