[Request] What would happen to the turkey if you did this?

This is 10x the estimated temperature at the site of the nuclear blast at Hiroshima. The turkey would cease to exist in any recognizable form.

Surface of sun is around 10,000 and core is about 27,000,000. That turkey is is gonna be somewhere between cremated and a distant memory.

If you apply a thin layer of “air” to the outside of the turkey at that temperature (just enough to maintain the heat for 1 second), it would be vaporized on the outside, then burned a little deeper in, then overcooked, then undercooked, and the inside would stay raw

Speculating so sorry no math. I think the outside of the turkey would act as an ablative heat shield. Very quickly, the outside would vaporize which requires a ton of energy for two phases changes. This would create a barrier of comparatively cool turkey vapor surrounding the turkey. This would largely protect the turkey itself for the remainder of the cooking time. Not sure how largely though.

Probably not a great deal. It would probably completely vaporise the skin and a few mm of flesh but I doubt 1 second would effectively transfer enough heat to have a significant impact.

This is also wrong because Howie forgot to convert to Rankine (ew) before doing his thermal calculations. 350°F = 809.67°R => 809.67°R * 3600s/hr * 4h = 11,659,248°R for one second or 11,658,788.33°F for one second

Right, this is going to be fun. Assuming that everything is as average as it could be, and that the oven has no heating time (i.e. goes from room temperature to cooking temperature and back again instantly, staying at cooking temperature for one second):

Ideal gas law: PV=nkT

Pressure equation: P = nkT/V

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k = 1.380649×10^−23

5,040,000 F = 2800255.372 K

60 litres = 0.06 cubic metres

Average number of molecules in one cubic metre of air at sea level = 2.53×10^25

Average number of molecules in 0.06 cubic metres of air at sea level = 0.06×2.53×10^25

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Therefore, P = 2.53×10^25 ×1.380649×10^−23 ×2800255.372

= 978,140,954.111 Pa

= Approximately 9,653.5 atmospheres of pressure, instantly applied all at once

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Surface heat transfer coefficient of a turkey in air = 19.252 W/m^2 K

Time cooked = 1 s

Average turkey weight = 13.5 kg

Average turkey density = 591.75 kg/m^3

Therefore, average turkey volume = 0.02281368821 m^3

Average specific heat capacity of a turkey = 3530 J/kgK

Average room temperature = 295.65 K

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Assume uniform spherical turkey:

Sphere volume equation: V = (4pir^3)/3

Therefore, sphere radius equation: (3V/4pi)^(1/3)

Sphere surface area equation: A = 4pir^2

Therefore, sphere surface area equation from volume: A = 4pi(3V/4pi)^(2/3)

Therefore, average surface area = 0.38899837972 m^2

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Temperature reached for a uniform object after one second equation: T = Te + (T1 – Te)e^(-hA/mC)

Therefore, if heating uniformly, T at t = 1 is = 2800255.372 + (295.65 – 2800255.372)e^(-19.252×0.38899837972/13.5×3530) = 735.629894426 K

Therefore, the turkey would reach 462 celsius, or 864 farenheit all of the way through

If it were to just be heating, we could condense this thermal energy to the outside, as the turkey would not heat uniformly, The inside would be completely raw, whilst the outside would be quite significantly burned, but still very much intact. The bigger thing would be the sudden spike in pressure inside the oven. Assuming that the oven doesn’t explode instantly, the turkey would be immediately crushed into a tiny, shrivelled ball of meat and bone, spraying liquid everywhere. It would then rapidly expand when the pressure dropped, but nowhere near as violently. This compression would mean that for the duration, it’s not cooking a full size turkey, but rather a tiny lump of flesh, cooking it through completely, which is why we can assume it’s spherical and uniform without much issue. This is still an estimate, of course, but it should be fairly close to what would actually happen (unless my maths is wrong, in which case throw all of this out of the window). Incidentally, I somehow did find a paper modelling the exact heat transfer of cooking a turkey, worth a read

EDIT: Formatting

Given the comparisons of the temperature I think that paraphrasing xkcd sums it up ” it would cease being a coming process and become a physics experiment”

Well, the core of a fusion reactor is 100 million degrees Celsius. 5 million F is about 2.7 million C. So it’s 2.7% the temp of fusion. I think it would be a bit crispy, but still tender inside. 🙂

Ignoring the “completely vaporize it” aspect that others have mentioned… Basically all the questions you see like this about can you cook very fast using very high temperature result in the outside of the food being burnt to a crisp while the inside is raw. It takes time for heat to move through the material of the food and cook it normally, so a brief intense burst of heat only affects the outside layer of the food.

… there’s a lot of people suggesting it’d evaporate but since the exposure is a mere second, could it be that the turkeys skin and outer flesh layer would absorb most of the heat? Like a “Leidenfrost- shield” made of ashes instead of vapor?

On the other hand… It’s 504 times the strength of Little Boy, so I guess that argument is moot ^^

So in the same vein of this question, is there a temperature or much shorter time that would “correctly” flash cook the bird and cook in this manner?

Depends if it’s an open oven or closed oven. An open system does, in fact, leak enough energy to act like a nuclear bomb.

A closed system is an interesting case though, where no energy leaves the oven until it’s turned off and then opened.

Hmm if you raised a few layers of atoms of the surface of the turkey almost instantaneously to that temperature for 1 second you would essentially laser clean the turkey and not cook it. If it’s more than a few atoms then it’s fusion time baby. We r making a bomb.

I imagine the outside will be charred beyond recognition while the inside would be raw.

When coming up with speed cooking myths, no one seems to understand that it takes time to cook things properly.

Better question: how hot would it have to be for the turkey to be fully cooked in 1 second. Also ignoring physics where you could instantly set the oven temperature and will instantly go to room temp once the timer is done.

According to my math, which could be wrong, it would increase the temperature of the turkey on average by 100 degrees F. So unless it was room temperature or hotter to start with, it would probably still be raw inside. The outside may be vaporized though. Somewhere in the middle it would be cooked.
Air doesn’t transfer heat fast enough to do all that much in 1 second, even at 5 million degrees. I think.