Tom Eagar's Teflon frying pan frost adhesion test

Tom's own bench test. Cut out a Teflon pan bottom, soldered a cooling pad underneath, deposited water droplets and steam frost. Drops pop off easily; vapor-deposited frost cannot be removed without scraping off the Teflon. Empirically confirms the vapor-deposition-fills-asperities argument.

So I actually had a reason to run a test. We went to the store and got a Teflon-coated frying pan, cut a flat sheet out of the bottom, and soldered on a cooling pad underneath. When it was cold, we put some drops of water on, and then we basically steamed it. When you were all done, you had drops of water frozen on there, and you had a film of frost frozen on there. You could take a steel blade and just pop the drops of water off, because they were just sitting on top of the Teflon and they never bonded. You could not get rid of that frost — you'd have to scrape away the Teflon before you could get rid of the frost.