The gas cooker
The gas cooker is a cooking stove that uses gas as its combusting material. The gas cooker is really simple to operate but a lot of caution has to be exercised because, as simple as it seems, the fuel is highly inflammable, it is sometimes a mixture of propane and methane and sometimes it is only propane. These are hydrocarbons of low molecular weight. This means that they burn very fast. These fuels are so delicate to work with.
Operating the gas cooker is a simple procedure of turning on the gas cylinder that houses the fuel. The knob is simply switched on to turn on the flow of the fuel. The fuel now flows from the gas cylinder to, through the hose. The hose is connected to the gas cooker.
A typical Gas cylinder looks like this
A gas cooker
The next step is so strike the lighter (fire); you can either use a fire lighter or a box of matches.
The next thing is to turn the knob to switch on the flow of the fuel onto the burner. This would allow the fuel to flow onto the burner and set up a continuous flow of fuel onto the burner. However, it is important to light the fire before turning on the knob of the burner. This is to prevent the fuel from flowing out of the burner into the environment. This is because the gas would readily mix with the air – this might cause an explosion. After the cooking is done, the knob is simply turned off to stop the flow of the fuel. As soon as the fuel stops flowing, the flame goes down and is completely extinguished.
The gas cooker is not my favorite appliance because of so many reasons.
Among them is the fire hazard associated with it. If one misses one of the steps wrongly or if one forgets to turn off the fuel and the gas escapes into the surrounding, it can cause a fire disaster if any one unknowingly lights a fire.
Also, the fuel gas has a peculiar choking smell. It can cause lung diseases on chronic exposure. This is because the gas irritates the lungs (a direct link has been established between lung function and exposure to gas) and at the same time reduces the amount of oxygen that is breathed in because it can readily mix with air. This can cause hypoxia on chronic exposure and even outright asphyxia.
Moreover, if the gas the gas cooker I use at home has three different burners. Is is not easy telling which knob operates which burner as all the three burners are of the same color and size. In effect, it is possible to switch on more than one knob in the process of trying to find out which know which knob controls which burner.
A schematic diagram of how the top looks
