this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
648 points (96.0% liked)

memes

10703 readers
2561 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Improperly aligned waveguide.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Easily fixable if you tape a penny to the inside at the height your food is located instead of the default plate level.

Edit: Don't do this.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just to be safe, for anyone reading this, do not do this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's a better show if you microwave a grape

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Microwave a pickle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Now that's a fun one!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just like mixing bleach and ammonia to make crystals

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Do not do this with other coins. I used a cent instead of a penny and my microwave blew up.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Nope, it just doesn't happen. It's an illusion of sorts, the plate isn't being heated because microwaves work essentially on shaking water molecules. Ceramics and plastics are ultra low water content, put a plate in the microwave by itself and it won't be hot.

What you're noticing is the plate heating because the food is heating and the food is transferring heat to the plate, not the other way round.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A simple refutation is that metal gets hot in the microwave, and it has no water in it. Microwave radiation heats many things, not just water

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Only at the points it discharges the waves electrically. All the rest of the metal usually stays quite cold,... I've taken out plenty of forgotten spoons in my lifetime. 😅 Hence why microwavable metal is a thing. (Like the metal rack the usualky cones with combi-ovens.) Metal is a good heatconductor though, so microwavable metal will easily get hotter than the food heating it (much like your car's metal exterior getting hotter from the sun than it's environment), yet if you microwave that metal on its own it will not heat up at all...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Metal is a good heatconductor though, so microwavable metal will easily get hotter than the food heating it

That's... not how heat conduction works. Something can't get hotter than the thing that's heating it. What's heating the metal is the microwave radiation.

yet if you microwave that metal on its own it will not heat up at all...

But

It does

Metal that's designed to be part of the microwave, like a rack or the walls, is designed specifically to avoid heating up. But like, a spoon by itself on the turntable will definitely get hot if you microwave it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It was simplified for ease. Metal indeed does not actually get hotter than its environment, but due to it's heat conductivity it has the ability to relay any surrounding heat when any spot gets cooled down (like when you touch it), it will transfer surrounding heat-energy to the colder spot, which it can do better than most other materials.

Either way, any spoon I ever accidentally microwaved remained quite cold tbh, though I have not tested this out over extended periods of time. Any heated food touching it will still be the main source it will draw energy from when touched, though...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know how we manage to live under different laws of physics then, because I have definitely touched metal that had been in the microwave and gotten hot, and there are videos of people putting metal in the microwave showing it getting hot without sparking. Unless me, everyone I know, those guys, and all their commenters are all lying, metal will most definitely get hot in the microwave

Am I getting sharks are smoothed?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, if you look it up on Google you will find above definition, though... 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Look what up on google???

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Different principle entirely but ask a physicist, I'm not telling you to trust me. I'm telling you to look, learn, and experiment.

Ed: Here's a hint. The first microwave was called a radarrange.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But I have experimented... I've melted plastic spoons in the microwave before. Where's the water in plastic?

Edit: that's not really a hint. What does radar have to do with how microwaves heat things?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Those aren't microwave safe then, other materials react as well but microwaves are tuned to shame water really well and most everything else not as well.

Yes it is. Microwaves came from radar and radar works on the same principal.

Ed:

In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave oven was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.[12][13]

To verify his finding, Spencer created a high-density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly. On 8 October 1945, Raytheon filed a United States patent application for Spencer's microwave cooking process, and an oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed in a Boston restaurant for testing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is true though... Microwaves work around 1000W, at which point we just have enough power to shake one of our losest (in terms of molecules) elements. It's been a while, but I too was taught that the step to heating anything else with microwaves was way too high, but only being able te heat water is enough for most food-related cases as many contain these. (You won't be able to heat up uncooked spaghetti, for example.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know, for the most part talking science is like talking to a wall but it's pretty gratifying when someone finds it and is randomly excited.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I used to have some melamine plates that would get hot in the microwave.

[–] thtroyer 1 points 1 year ago

Melamine is a weird exception. It absorbs microwaves for some reason, which is why it isn't recommended for microwave use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just FYI, melamine is not microwave safe and can catch fire or release toxic fumes into your food.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I figured that out...after using them for years while I was growing up 😞

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's the many tiny air bubbles trapped in low quality ceramics that vibrate and heat it up.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Possibly, feldspar content can have an effect as well in ceramic but in general the plate is not doing the heating or being heated. An ideal ceramic plate or plastic plate doesn't heat until you get real crazy and manage to hit a frequency it likes.