Appliances: toaster dials

Self-tutoring about toasters: the tutor checks a claim.

The other day someone told me that the dial on a toaster means minutes: for instance, setting it to 3 means it will toast for 3 minutes. “As if,” I said. My wife agrees: to our minds, the numbers on the dial are just relative levels of toasting.

Yet, the person who claimed the numbers mean minutes was adamant, so I put in some bread at 2 and a half, then timed it. It popped at 2min 15sec. “The toaster is twenty years old,” they claimed (which it is). “Obviously, new, it would have popped at 2min 30sec.”

You be the judge.