| Your intuition is right in this case. A 2kW oven is more than enough to heat small chicken up to temperature. The author lazily took the 165F temperature and put it into a blackbody calculator without converting the units. Anything but the metric system... Assuming the chicken has a surface area A=1m^2 (corresponding to a perfectly spherical chicken of radius=25cm/diameter=50cm, a little bigger than usual) and is a perfect blackbody (just going to handwave this one). with the incorrect temperature:
A blackbody with T=165°C (438 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=2090 W. with the correct temperature:
A blackbody with T=74°C (347 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=824 W. Also neglected is the incoming radiation from the ambient environment. Without this, the "power loss" is closer to measuring the chicken in deep interstellar space.
from a room temperature environment:
T=20°C (293 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=419 W onto the chicken. The net power loss of the cooling chicken on the kitchen counter is therefore something like 824-419 = 405W, rapidly decreasing as the temperature drops towards room temperature. e.g. at 50°C it's around 200W. |