Its also why in tv shows made in the USA/Canada they always show stove top kettles with the whistle one.

Always make me think of my Grans council house in Birmingham (UK) and her kettle.

There's no reason why a 110 V kettle couldn't be as powerful as a 230 V one, if it was designed for that voltage. Just like light bulbs in the US are not generally less bright than those in France.

If you take a 230 V kettle and connect it to 110 V, then yes it will be less powerful. Perhaps about 1/4 of the power.

If volts were there only limitation on the design that would be correct, however amps are also important in this case. A 240V UK wall socket can be up to 13 amps whilst a US 110V line is 12 amps.

With power (watts) being volts * amps that gives the power of 3120 Vs 1320 watts for UK Vs USA respectively.

This means a UK kettle can dump heat into the water up to 2.4 times faster so should boil in less than half the time.

Kettles are at the high end of power consumption as generally people want a fast boil. Lights are towards the low end as its rare for someone to want even 1000 watts of incandescent brightness.

In Europe kettles typically use around 2300W, since homes are typically wired with 16A breakers (and you don't want the kettle to pop the breaker as soon as you add another device). But US homes are wired similarly, typically with 15A breakers. So you get kettles that typically use 1500W, much less than the European equivalent.

Sure, you could use powerful kettles in the US on a 20W outlet, or on a 230V circuit, but nobody is going to do that. A typical kettle that you can just buy and plug in wherever is less powerful in the US just because you use halve the voltage but don't wire for double the current.

Ok, that makes sense! I guess I just assumed that US wiring would typically be rated for higher currents to compensate for the less efficient transmission.

It didn't occur to me that Americans would settle for having less power than the rest of the world, it seems uncharacteristic somehow :)

We choose wiring gauge mostly by the "how large can it be while still moving well inside a wall?" factor. So, it's not surprising different places use the same one.

On the face of it, it would be equally unsurprising if wiring was dimensioned to fit the needed power output. But you are right of course.

I'm sure 1% of Americans have 30 amp circuits in their kitchen and the help can boil water at twice the rate. Most Americans support this because they consider themselves just temporarily embarrassed by low-powered kettles.

Americans have 240v to the house. My dryer and oven are 240v. Just the general utility outlets are half that.