[Physics] How hot is the water in the pot

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Question: How hot is the water in the pot? More precisely speaking, how can I get a temperature of the water as a function of time a priori?

Background & My attempt: Recently I started spend some time on cooking. And I'm curious about it. I have learned mathematics as a undergraduate student for four years, but I know a little about thermodynamics. (I listened to such a lecture once. So I've heard of $dU = TdS – pdV$, Entropy and Gibbs energy for example though I forgot almost everything; anyway I think I've never seen a formula depending on time.) So I conduct a small experiment first: I heat 100ml of water by IH correspond approximately to 700W and measure its temperature every 30 seconds. Here is the results.
experiment results

It looks almost linear, but I think linear approximation is inappropriate; because if so, the water gets higher than $100^\circ\mathrm{C}$. So I guess it's some convex increasing function like $T(t) = 100 – \alpha e^{-t/\beta}$ for some positive constant $\alpha$ and $\beta$. But it doesn't fit the data. (It does fit the data. I just made a mistake in simple calculation. See my answer.)

I think I ignored too many factors. So feel free to assume anything reasonable. I would greatly appreciate if you help me. Thank you.

Additional question: I do a experiment and some calculation to deal with a problem pointed out in the comments of my answer: bad fitting at lower temperature. However, I cannot get a better solution. Fitting seems worse than before… Here is the results what I got. I heated 100ml water in pot with 9cm radius by IH correspond to 700W. (For calculation, I added linear interpolation values in the graph.) How can I get a better solution?
logistic-curve
(Light blue curve is a logistic approximation defined by $T = \dfrac{100}{1 + 1.62 e^{-0.0168 t}}$ as mentioned here.)

Best Answer

It seems we have reached the point where simple models are no longer satisfying. Rather than posing ad hoc DEs maybe it's time to try an actual physical model. Short of doing a full hydrodynamic simulation (definitely overkill here) we can try what is called a lumped capacitance model where we divide the system up into a number of "lumps" and energy flows between the lumps:

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The fundamental law governing this system is the conservation of energy. Every lump has an equation of the form

$$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}(\text{energy in lump}) = \text{rate of energy entering} - \text{rate of energy leaving}. $$

We treat the heat input as a fixed flow and the air (environment) as a heat bath at a fixed temperature. If we let the heat capacity of the $i$-th lump be $C_i(T)$, which can be a function of temperature then

$$ \begin{array}{rcl} \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} \left( C_p(T_p) T_p \right) &=& P - r_1 (T_p - T_w) - r_2 (T_p - T_a)\\ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} \left( C_w(T_w) T_w \right) &=& r_1 (T_p - T_w) - r_3 (T_w - T_a) \end{array} $$

You can look up how the heat capacity $C_w(T)$ varies with temperature for water (though probably not for the pot material?), but we will simplify dramatically and assume, incorrectly, that the heat capacities are constant.

$$ \begin{array}{rccl} \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} T_p &=& - \frac{r_1 + r_2}{C_p} T_p + \frac{r_1}{C_p} T_w + \frac{P + r_2 T_a}{C_p} &\equiv& a T_p + b T_w + s_p\\ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} T_w &=& \frac{r_1}{C_w} T_p - \frac{r_1 + r_3}{C_w} T_w + \frac{r_3 T_a}{C_w} &\equiv& c T_p + d T_w + s_w \end{array} $$

where the $a,b,c,d,s_p,s_w$ are shorthands. Note that only six combinations of the seven parameters ($r_1,r_2,r_3,P,T_a,C_p,C_w$) actually enter the problem, so there is some degeneracy of the parameters. You can see, Taro, that this is almost the model you came up with in your answer. The difference is that I'm including the heat input explicitly, so that conservation of energy is guaranteed.

With the obvious matrix shorthand these equations can be written

$$ \dot{T}-MT = s, $$

which, for a constant source, has the solution

$$ T\left(t\right) = \mathrm{e}^{Mt}T_{0}+\mathrm{e}^{Mt}\left(\int_{0}^{t}\mathrm{e}^{-M\tau}\mathrm{d}\tau\right) s. $$

When $M$ is invertible (which it definitely should be for this problem - if it's not then there is a mistake somewhere) the integral can be simplified:

$$ T\left(t\right) = \mathrm{e}^{Mt}\left(T_{0}+M^{-1}s\right)-M^{-1}s. $$

You can check this satisfies the original equation with the proper boundary conditions. There are eight parameters to fit: the four matrix elements, two sources, and two initial temperatures. It is a non-linear regression problem since the matrix exponential depends non-linearly on the fit parameters. So I'm afraid I don't know of a robust and efficient way to fit this model to your data, unless you use some assumptions to simplify the parameter dependence, but this is the physically motivated model for your situation.

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