@TechConnectify Can you also explain European stovetops with
A) 3-phase 400V power compared to the two 120V phases?
B) knobs with individual positions, compared to the continuous cams?
I am especially wondering about the latter. I remember our stovetop from my childhood having something like 6 discrete steps or so.
@root42 I'm not intimately familiar with the three-phase setup but I think it's likely that each element is wired phase-to-neutral and thus only has 230V across it. Access to all phases just allows for better balancing.
As far as those with discrete positions, it depends. Some hot plates have multiple resistors and you're selecting different combinations (apparently this was big in Germany?), others might be stepped simmerstat-like controls.
A friend of mind had a 3-phase tankless water heater that would, depending on water flow, either connect some resistors between phases and ground (getting 230V on each) or across phases (getting 400V on each)[1]. I don't know whether stoves did anything of that sort.
[1] We found this out in a very amusing way: the setup was kinda borked, in that the main circuit breaker for the house wasn't ganged. If you tripped one phase only in that CB, you'd get some lowish (<100V) voltage on that phase if you opened a hot water tap to the correct degree. Thus, in that state the hot water tap controlled ~a third of the lights in the place.