Oh.... OH! DUH!
 

https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/...b1&oe=551AA2DF

[facepalm] Okay, I'll admit it. I went 23 years not realizing that the numbers on a toaster corresponded to minutes.

I was in college before it fully sank in that fractions are a representation of division.

Sometimes we just take things as they're presented to us and don't spare a second of critical thought to them. That's okay; if we tried to think critically about every single thing we ever saw, we'd never get anything done for all the pondering! But this can also mean that we go our entire lives thinking that toasters are ruled by degrees of toastiness. When we finally see the truth, it's like glass shattering. The world is so much clearer! There is sense in all this random nonsense floating around (side note - you do know that "nonsense" is just "non" added onto "sense" right? non-sense. Nonsense.)! As that moment of clarity passes, you then feel like the most enormous idiot for not seeing it sooner. If you share your revelation with a friend, they're probably laughing hysterically at your idiocy.

Share these moments with us. Maybe you'll inspire some realizations for others. Or at least we can come together in our mutual stupidity as a little support group. [lol]

OMG really??? I swear I never knew that about toasters!

yes. many of these moments
just cant remember. i will come back when i do XD

and oooh man i never knew that either haha
but i never thought about it at the same time...-just turns the dial-

Now I'm feeling the need to time my toaster [ninja]

But really, it's obvious that it's down to timings, I mean, the toaster doesn't know how brown the toast is/isn't getting. My thread about toasters covered this pretty clearly. [lol] But here we all were, assuming the toaster could somehow tell (but basically didn't care).

Hm, I didn't think that the toaster had some magical sensor or something but that it was just an arbitrary amount of time. I guess that explains why toast takes so darn long sometimes though if putting it on 5 actually means 5 minutes!

They should put pictures instead of numbers, 5 would be flames [ninja]

Yeah, I never expected any sort of sensor for doneness... Just figured it had to do with arbitrary amounts of time and intensity of the heat (lower numbers: lower heat, shorter toast time; higher numbers: higher heat, longer toast time). Basically "Setting 1, setting 2," not 1 min, 2 mins.

And how does that guy know it's minutes, might be on his toaster, part of me still wants to time mine and see. [lol]

I like burnt toast, I always put mine on 8 or 9, and it definitely doesn't take that long. I refuse to accept any explanation besides Degrees of Toastiness.

Degrees of Toastiness sounds too good to not be the proper designated term anyway. Dualit should start using it, all the other manufacturers would copy them. ><