An induction cooktop heats the pan directly with a magnetic field, not with a hot element. Use the buttons to look inside it and follow the power from the mains to the eddy currents in the base.
An induction cooktop is an electric hob that heats the pan directly. Instead of warming a metal element and letting the pan pick up that heat, it uses a changing magnetic field to make the pan's own base hot.
The surface is a sheet of glass-ceramic. Underneath sit a spiral copper coil and the electronics that drive it, all packed into one shallow case.
From outside it looks like any smooth electric hob. Hiding the housing shows the coil, the control board and the fan, and makes the surprising part visible: the energy path never touches the food — it heats the pan bottom, not the glass.
Two ideas matter most: the current is switched very fast, and the field it makes only heats metal that a magnet would stick to. Everything else exists to supply that current and keep it cool.
Electricity comes in from the power lead. The control board rectifies it to a steady supply, then the IGBT inverter switches it on and off tens of thousands of times a second. The result is a fast alternating current.
That current flows through a flat spiral of copper wire under the glass. A changing current always makes a changing magnetic field, and here the field reverses many thousands of times a second.
The field passes straight through the glass panel, which does not block it. Inside the pot's ferromagnetic base the field induces circular currents, called eddy currents, that swirl within the metal.
Any metal resists the flow of those currents, and that resistance turns electrical energy into heat. Because the currents are in the base itself, the base becomes the hottest part while the glass is heated only by contact with the pan.
The hot base cooks the food directly. Meanwhile the coil and the switching electronics warm up in use, so a fan draws cooling air through the housing to keep them from overheating.
Mostly it is heated by contact with the hot pan, not by the cooktop itself. The glass is transparent to the magnetic field and a poor heat conductor, so on its own it stays much cooler than the pan.
The base must be ferromagnetic so the changing field can drive eddy currents in it. Cast iron and magnetic stainless steel work; aluminium, copper and glass pans do not heat on their own.
It switches the rectified mains on and off at high frequency, turning steady mains into a fast alternating current. That current is what makes the coil's magnetic field change rapidly.
A normal electric plate heats a metal element first and then passes that heat to the pan. Induction skips the element entirely and makes the pan itself the heated part.
The coil and the switching electronics warm up in use. The fan pulls air through the housing so those parts stay within their safe working temperature.
The field is strong but tightly confined, falling away quickly with distance and stopping as soon as the coil is switched off. It only acts on nearby magnetic metal, not on people standing at the hob.