Hi, I've made a tiny heater with a 47 ohm 3w ceramic resistor cable tied onto a couple of old heatsinks. It's to go under a cut off plastic bottle to keep the frost off my new plants.
Power dissipated is just over 3w and it gets nice and hot (side of resistor 75°c, heatsink 65°c).
My thoughts are, what if I used a 100w resistor? It would still be dissipating 3.3w but would be cold and not make a good heater. But that doesn't make sense because they dissipate power AS heat. Where is my thought process going wrong?
Power dissipated is just over 3w and it gets nice and hot (side of resistor 75°c, heatsink 65°c).
My thoughts are, what if I used a 100w resistor? It would still be dissipating 3.3w but would be cold and not make a good heater. But that doesn't make sense because they dissipate power AS heat. Where is my thought process going wrong?