I am currently working on homework for my firefighting class. Our current chapter is covering fire behavior and one of our assignments involves assessing heat transfer.
My assignment is to place a metal pan of water on the stove and heat it until it boils. I am then to record what type(s) of heat transfer were responsible for heating the water enough to make it boil. While I was writing up the report, I - without hesitation - wrote that the water heated through convection; but the pan became hot through conduction.
However, after doing a Google search, to ensure that what I wrote made a fair amount of sense; I noticed several illustrations that seemed to point to the pan becoming hot not through conduction but rather through radiation.
So, my question is this, when a metal pan of water is sitting on an electric stove, is the method of heat transfer from the element to the pan primarily conduction or radiation?
The illustration I looked at can be viewed here.
Update: after reviewing several other illustrations, I determined that I looked at them wrong additionally. However, because of the nature of the question, I wish to keep it open.
