Comment Re:1200 C?? (Score 1) 228
Perhaps they got confused because nichrome melts at 1,400C, which makes it seem a bit improbable that it can "heat quickly and reliably to temperatures as high as 2,200 C."
But really, they aren't confused. You and the authors (Nathan Myhrvold & W. Wayt Gibbs) are.
1,200 C just happens to be extremely close to 2,200 F (2,192 F to be precise). Most likely they read somewhere that nichrome heating elements can reliably reach 2,200 degrees and assumed C when it was actually F. Since they're usually limited to 1,200 C, they assumed incorrectly that there was a massive amount of extra capacity for heating, not realizing that the 1,200 and 2,200 values were actually the same number.