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Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I am the tech editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. And sitting across from me, as he always
Speaker 1: does on these occasions, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. And
Speaker 1: we're coming to you alive, even though a blizzard of
Speaker 1: epic proportions is going on directly outside the studio of
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, or at least it's snowing,
Speaker 1: and in Atlanta, that's like the snow apocalypse. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: um as, as the world breaks down outside and we
Speaker 1: see the angry mobs set fire two cars and raided
Speaker 1: all the grocery stores for all the milk and bread
Speaker 1: that they have, eggs and eggs and toilet paper, we
Speaker 1: will we will soldier on and bring you another fresh, hot,
Speaker 1: tasty episode of tech Stuff. And in this case, the
Speaker 1: episode comes to a courtesy of a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Timas and I hope I'm
Speaker 1: saying that correctly. It could also be Timas or some
Speaker 1: other pronunciation of which I'm unfamiliar, and it goes like this. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Timas from Taiwan. I'm in eighth grade. I just
Speaker 1: started listening to your podcast and I already love it.
Speaker 1: I have a quick question for you. How do microwaves work?
Speaker 1: Please answer it if you have time, preferably in a podcast. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Keep up the awesome work. Ps. Please reply so I
Speaker 1: can make sure I have the right email address. Well,
Speaker 1: I did reply, so he knows he has alright email address. Uh,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about microwave ovens. We're assuming
Speaker 1: that's what he means by microwaves, because microwaves themselves are
Speaker 1: a form of electro magnetic radiation. Yes, they are a
Speaker 1: particular kind that their wavelengths can measure from anywhere from
Speaker 1: a few centimeters to about a foot long. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: huge for radio waves. Visible light is actually in the
Speaker 1: pnenometer scale four seven hundreds or nanometers. I did it
Speaker 1: the way you like, specifically, so we wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: do that, Yeah, which is which is why? Yes? Where Yeah?
Speaker 1: So either either either either? Yeah? This is ah. This
Speaker 1: is all thanks to a guy named Percy Spencer. Yes,
Speaker 1: back in nine, which, Uh, it's kind of a funny story.
Speaker 1: I actually saw an episode of I can't even remember
Speaker 1: what it was. It's one of those those history of
Speaker 1: mechanics shows, probably something, but anyway, it was talking about
Speaker 1: different inventions, and the way he discovered microwaves could cook
Speaker 1: was very very interesting. I mean, he was already working
Speaker 1: with microwaves, but for radar purposes, because he was working
Speaker 1: his candy ball. He didn't melt this candy bar. He
Speaker 1: was working with a radar system, yes, which uses a
Speaker 1: device called a magnetron. Yes. He was working on it
Speaker 1: for the Raytheon Corporation, Yes, and still is involved with
Speaker 1: a lot of defense stuff. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So during
Speaker 1: his his experiments, I mean, the magnetrons have been in
Speaker 1: use for for several years up to that point, he
Speaker 1: just noticed that when he took it out of its
Speaker 1: uh of its casing and it was working on it
Speaker 1: with some other experiments. He knows one day that the
Speaker 1: candy bar he had in his pocket had mysteriously melted,
Speaker 1: and he thought, I wonder if this has anything to
Speaker 1: do with this magnetron do hickey, Except he probably thought
Speaker 1: of it in much more scientific terms. He then decided
Speaker 1: to try and experiment. He placed some kernels of unpopped
Speaker 1: popcorn next to it. He read that sucker up by
Speaker 1: pulling the little chain, getting that diesel engine going. Um.
Speaker 1: Actually that's not exactly how it worked. But he turned
Speaker 1: it on and watched as the unpopped popcorn became popped
Speaker 1: popcorn and said ah ha. And then of course he
Speaker 1: did the next logical step. He put an egg next
Speaker 1: to it and watched it explode. It's true, it's totally
Speaker 1: I know it was. I know, it's totally true. That's
Speaker 1: the funny thing is it's just amazing that he didn't
Speaker 1: immediately like put a grape next to it, and then
Speaker 1: maybe an incandescent BOWLB But I mean, all the things
Speaker 1: that you see on YouTube of people putting stupid stuff
Speaker 1: in the microwave, it's amazing he was the one that
Speaker 1: was discovering that it was stupid. Perhaps perhaps he was
Speaker 1: doing it and we just haven't don't have the record
Speaker 1: of it. And then and then he did a compact disc.
Speaker 1: He invented the compact disk. So no, he did not
Speaker 1: invent the compact disc. No, no, no, But it is
Speaker 1: kind of funny because you figure if the microwave. The
Speaker 1: microwave emissions from the Magnatron were cooking the candy bar
Speaker 1: and the popcorn and the egg. Probably wasn't doing him
Speaker 1: very much good. But as I used to joke about that,
Speaker 1: but as it turned out, he lived a very long life,
Speaker 1: so well, apparently I didn't do him too much. He
Speaker 1: would you would feel the effects pretty quickly, because I mean,
Speaker 1: it does heat up tissue very It's it's not like
Speaker 1: it just magically goes from from uncooked to cooked. But
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. We'll talk about the actual sequence
Speaker 1: that happens when microwaves encounter, um, anything that happens to
Speaker 1: have some sort of moisture in it. Well, um Percy Spencer.
Speaker 1: His discovery led Raytheon to release the world's first microwaveve
Speaker 1: and in which incredibly compact. Right. Oh yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the size of a refrigerator five and a half feet tall.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the first microwave was just a little shorter
Speaker 1: than my wife. But that sucker was a lot more
Speaker 1: powerful than the ones that they have out now because
Speaker 1: that it was it was essentially an industrial microwave machine.
Speaker 1: It was you know, very very early on and very
Speaker 1: very expensive cook an entire deer in just five seconds. Wow. Um, anyway,
Speaker 1: they were they ran between two thousand and three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars yea, and the very first one cost about five grand.
Speaker 1: They're very very the very first one five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which in ninety seven was about the same price as
Speaker 1: you could get for Poland you are just on a
Speaker 1: roll today anyway, it's snowing outside. It's a snow day,
Speaker 1: right anyhow. Um, so you know, this was a little
Speaker 1: bit out of the price range of the average American household, right,
Speaker 1: So Raythoon licensed the technology to t Happen. Uh, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, T Happen introduced the first domestic
Speaker 1: microwave oven, which was still out of the price range
Speaker 1: of the average uh, you know household, um, but you know,
Speaker 1: as considerably cheaper than those giant industrial models. Um. And
Speaker 1: then uh, Raytheon inquired Amana, so there you go to
Speaker 1: the Amanda radar range. The two names came together and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's in sixty seven, Raytheon did their first
Speaker 1: domestic hundred volt microwave oven, which was under five and
Speaker 1: of course now they're you know, approximately seven dollars if
Speaker 1: you really wanted to. You could go out buy one
Speaker 1: ruin it by putting one of the things you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to put in it, and then watch go out
Speaker 1: and buy another one, and you're really only out likes.
Speaker 1: So not that you should put anything uh weird in
Speaker 1: your microwave. You shouldn't. You really shouldn't. Don't do it.
Speaker 1: You could end up burning down the apartment. Besides, it's
Speaker 1: more fun to watch it on YouTube because then you
Speaker 1: let somebody else ruin their microwave and you get to
Speaker 1: keep yours right, and you also get to hear all
Speaker 1: the hilarious comments that go on in the background. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, and wow and this is stupid. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you're thinking, and you videotaped it, and not only that,
Speaker 1: but then went to the next step of uploading it
Speaker 1: to the internet to share it with everyone. So microwaves cook.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's get what they do using a They
Speaker 1: have a hurts or two point five gigga hurts h frequency. Yes,
Speaker 1: these are radio waves, remember so, um, let's that's specifically
Speaker 1: the kind of electromagnetic radiation we're talking about in the
Speaker 1: radio wave spectrum. And uh, they the thing waves of
Speaker 1: this this frequency can be absorbed by water and fat
Speaker 1: and sugar and some other stuff. Yeah, and uh, when
Speaker 1: they do get absorbed by these materials, those materials begin
Speaker 1: to generate a lot of atomic motion, which we also
Speaker 1: can refer to as heat. So there you go. The
Speaker 1: material absorbs these these waves, which then makes the material
Speaker 1: heat up and that can cook a um, well, whatever
Speaker 1: it is you put in there that happens to have water, bad,
Speaker 1: sugar or whatever in it. But it also means that
Speaker 1: certain other kinds of materials do not absorb these microwaves
Speaker 1: as metal. Metal metal actually reflects it, which is which
Speaker 1: is why you don't stick a fork or some aluminum
Speaker 1: foil in your microwave oven, you know. But you know what, uh,
Speaker 1: here's here's the thing is that if you do put
Speaker 1: metal in your microwave, like regular metal, not not like
Speaker 1: a foil, but something that has got more substance to it,
Speaker 1: so like a pot or whatever or it can, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily gonna spark um Ith. The sparking comes from
Speaker 1: things that if you were to have it too close
Speaker 1: to one of the walls of the microwave, where the
Speaker 1: differential between the metal that's in the whatever it is
Speaker 1: that you put in there and the metal of the
Speaker 1: wall that could possibly create a plasma that would end
Speaker 1: up sparking. But in most cases, what's really gonna happen
Speaker 1: is the metal is going to just reflect the microwaves
Speaker 1: off of whatever it is you're trying to nuke, and
Speaker 1: then you're not gonna have a hot dish. It's the
Speaker 1: food itself is not gonna get is not gonna absorb
Speaker 1: enough microwaves to heat up properly because the metal has
Speaker 1: reflected it all. And you know, just to to let
Speaker 1: you guys know, I mean, yeah, you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: put metal in the microwave, but it's because it inhibits
Speaker 1: the food from heating up rather than anything else. It's
Speaker 1: just like the the screen that's on your microwave door.
Speaker 1: You know, you look through a microwave and you see
Speaker 1: that little grid. It's a mesh. It's that's made out
Speaker 1: of metal. It's there. It's there to reflect microwaves back
Speaker 1: into the oven so that they don't go shooting out
Speaker 1: and nuking everything in your house. Yes, actually that's uh,
Speaker 1: the mesh is actually uh. I'm glad you mentioned that
Speaker 1: because I was interested in the mash because I had
Speaker 1: heard some people talking about why it was mesh and
Speaker 1: why it was there. You know, it's very important to
Speaker 1: have that mesh on there. Um. But you may wonder
Speaker 1: why it has little holes in it. Well, actually I
Speaker 1: um um. Funnily enough, I was at how Everything Works
Speaker 1: dot org, which being not really a competitor of ours
Speaker 1: actually sort of. Uh. You may know Lou Bloomfield who
Speaker 1: uh used to be on the Discovery Show. Um some
Speaker 1: assembly required. Um. He he wrote a piece. He actually
Speaker 1: answered several questions about microwaves and um. One of those
Speaker 1: is why the holes are there in the mash. Now, um,
Speaker 1: the holes you need the metal reflective surface on the
Speaker 1: door to keep the microwaves inside the oven and from
Speaker 1: you know, coming out of there and nuking your head.
Speaker 1: Should you be checking on the condition of your dinner? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and somebody's gonna bring up the fact that
Speaker 1: we're using the word nuke when it's not actually nuclear,
Speaker 1: but that it's it's colloquial. We're using nuke in the
Speaker 1: colloquial to microwaves something. Yes, but you need that mesh
Speaker 1: there for one to do that. But you also have
Speaker 1: to see the condition of your food or whatever. It
Speaker 1: is that you put in their coffee popcorn. Um, and uh,
Speaker 1: the holes are in there and you would think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe those are gonna let the microwaves out well as uh,
Speaker 1: as Luke Bloomfield explains, the microwaves are actually at a
Speaker 1: have a larger wavelength than the holes in the mash,
Speaker 1: so you can see in, but they can't come back out,
Speaker 1: which is really cool that it's and they're actually they can, uh,
Speaker 1: the wavelengths being you know, few centimeters to even feet
Speaker 1: in size. That's um, that's pretty cool. It's a lot
Speaker 1: like the prison I drive by all the time. You
Speaker 1: can see in, but they can't get out. Okay, So anyway,
Speaker 1: moving on to talking more about how these microwaves heat
Speaker 1: up material and cook them because microwaves are absorbed by
Speaker 1: this whatever material you've put into the microwave itself. Um,
Speaker 1: not necessarily because the foods that you put in there
Speaker 1: to be to have them absorbed, right, Yes, yes, that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. Specifically, I'm not talking about the plates
Speaker 1: or whatever, because some of those don't. Yes, okay, So
Speaker 1: the stuff you put in the microwave to actually heat up,
Speaker 1: Mr Pellette, the stuff you nuke in the microwave. Okay,
Speaker 1: anything that anything that has these materials that do absorb microwaves.
Speaker 1: They do so uniformly right, well, assuming that there's not
Speaker 1: too thick. If if the material is too thick, like
Speaker 1: if you were to put an entire chicken breast, for example,
Speaker 1: in there, and the chicken breast was a particularly meat
Speaker 1: each can breast, that might not be the best idea
Speaker 1: because you might not the microwaves might not be able
Speaker 1: to penetrate deeply enough to really heat up the chicken
Speaker 1: breast in a uniform way, and then you could end
Speaker 1: up with some raw chicken in the middle, and that's
Speaker 1: not good. Raw chicken in the middle, And depending on
Speaker 1: how long you cook it, it could be so you know,
Speaker 1: crunchy on the outside that you couldn't even eat it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be in it rubberized. So a normal oven cooks
Speaker 1: through uh you know the whole convection conduction thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's where you're conducting heat from one area to another.
Speaker 1: So you're cooking from the outside in. Heat is being
Speaker 1: applied to the outside of whatever the food is. That
Speaker 1: heat slowly moves inside and then eventually you have a
Speaker 1: cooked meal. And usually that means the outside is crispier
Speaker 1: or as as more well done if you prefer, then
Speaker 1: the middle is has has had heat applied to it
Speaker 1: for a longer time and uh and in a more
Speaker 1: direct way. Microwaves accord s don't do this. The material
Speaker 1: absorbs the microwaves, and microwaves are being bounced all around
Speaker 1: the the oven so that it's hitting. Ideally, it's hitting
Speaker 1: the food from pretty much every direction possible at that point,
Speaker 1: but of course it doesn't. Each microwave is a little
Speaker 1: bit different and they changes the age, which is why
Speaker 1: they have that carousel in the middle to spin the
Speaker 1: food to try to make sure that everything gets heated.
Speaker 1: People who use older microwaves often have to stop halfway
Speaker 1: through and rotate the food and then started again because
Speaker 1: just because the way the microwaves are are are the
Speaker 1: microwave ovens are designed, microwaves do tend to hit one
Speaker 1: side more frequently than another. I mean, it's because they
Speaker 1: go through this little microwave trough and then they come
Speaker 1: into the oven itself. They're not completely randomized, so if
Speaker 1: you aren't, if you don't have a carousel in your microwave,
Speaker 1: you may have to turn the food once or twice
Speaker 1: in order to have it heat evenly. Um and um. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was going to say the the microwaves are hitting
Speaker 1: the food and they're heating it up, but the air
Speaker 1: inside the microwave oven is staying at relatively the same
Speaker 1: temperature because the air is not absorbing the microwaves. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is another something interesting I found by reading
Speaker 1: our article about microwave and something site um that uh.
Speaker 1: I always wondered about those little silvery sleeves that you
Speaker 1: get with certain kinds of food like hot pockets. Yes,
Speaker 1: not that we're not we're not sponsored by them or anything.
Speaker 1: It's not. That's a good example. Without them, I would
Speaker 1: have died in college. But yes, things that you want
Speaker 1: crispy on the outside, because things when I was talking
Speaker 1: about the chicken breast earlier, when I said crispy, it's
Speaker 1: not We're not talking like the crust on a slice
Speaker 1: of bread. We're talking rubbery and hard and black in
Speaker 1: some cases from carbonization. Um. Now this, if you want
Speaker 1: something like that, like something with a uh that has
Speaker 1: been fried to be sort of crispy on the outside,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to heat up the outside more than
Speaker 1: you heat up the the middle and do that. They
Speaker 1: use this foil. That foil is designed to absorb those microwaves,
Speaker 1: and it heats up faster than the rest of the food,
Speaker 1: which heats at the outside of the food in addition
Speaker 1: to cooking the rest of it, so it makes the
Speaker 1: outside crispy. It's kind of it's kind of simulating what
Speaker 1: would happen if you put it in a regular oven. Yes,
Speaker 1: because it's not an approximation. I mean it is an approximation.
Speaker 1: It's not the real thing. Yeah, exactly, you can only
Speaker 1: kind of sort of fake it. Um and uh, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about what actually is going
Speaker 1: on here when you when you switch your microwave on.
Speaker 1: So what's going on here? You plug your microwave in. Now,
Speaker 1: First of all, microwaves have a switch that um will
Speaker 1: only remain shut if you close the door, So the
Speaker 1: microwave will not operate while the door is open, because
Speaker 1: the circuit is not is not complete until you close
Speaker 1: the door. It's very important for the safety of everybody
Speaker 1: on the outside of the microwave. People inside the microwave,
Speaker 1: you're kind of screwed. So the door closes, that completes
Speaker 1: the circuit. No no. I. Uh, you close the door,
Speaker 1: You've completed the circuit, and then the electricity from your
Speaker 1: from the power outlet comes in through the microwave, and uh,
Speaker 1: it goes through first a regular Uh, it goes through
Speaker 1: a low voltage UM section of your microwave, which this
Speaker 1: is what powers everything from like uh, your timer, the circuitry,
Speaker 1: everything that the fan that will turn as the microwave
Speaker 1: is going, or the carousel that turns as the microwave
Speaker 1: is going, UM, all the low voltage stuff. UH takes that.
Speaker 1: That's what hits first. After that, it goes into the
Speaker 1: high voltage transformer and this boosts the voltage significantly because
Speaker 1: it turns out the magnetron um not the leader of
Speaker 1: the Decepticons. As I will discovered, you were just talking
Speaker 1: about transformer. This is true, um, but yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: confused me. I was like, it goes into a high
Speaker 1: voltage transformer and it's called magnetron. Is it a Decepticon? No. Uh.
Speaker 1: The high voltage transformer then feeds energy into the magnetron,
Speaker 1: which is what converts the electricity into radio waves known
Speaker 1: as microwaves. Uh. The microwaves are there's a fan that's
Speaker 1: blowing and the reason the fan blows is to kind
Speaker 1: of break up the microwaves so that they go in. Uh,
Speaker 1: it randomizes it a little bit so that you don't
Speaker 1: just have a stream of microwaves hitting a very specific
Speaker 1: spot on the in the oven, because otherwise you would
Speaker 1: just have one really hot spot and the rest of
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very effective, which would mean you would
Speaker 1: have to place food in a very specific point in
Speaker 1: the oven um, which kind of you know, defeats the purpose.
Speaker 1: So uh, it goes. The microwaves go through essentially a trough. Really,
Speaker 1: it's it's a guidance system. They come into the oven,
Speaker 1: they get randomized a bit, they bounce around until they
Speaker 1: are absorbed by something um or they just fizzle out,
Speaker 1: and then then you get your hot, tasty popcorn, which
Speaker 1: I can't stand because it gives me migraines. Yeah, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but stove cooked popcorn is so much better the microwave popcorn.
Speaker 1: It just is. Yeah. Oh, and although it is a
Speaker 1: quick sack, I agree. I should say that the trough
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, it's it's a metal channel. It's actually
Speaker 1: called the wave guide. The name just totally jumped out
Speaker 1: of my brain. While I was talking about it. But
Speaker 1: as I looked on in my notes, I realized, hey,
Speaker 1: I actually did write that down wave guide and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm Steve. Will be your wave guide today. Right on
Speaker 1: your left you will see the microwaves. Actually you won't
Speaker 1: because it's outside the range of visible light. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know how magnetron's work, wow, this
Speaker 1: gets this gets pretty complicated. Yeah, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: into that in my research. So they are made up
Speaker 1: of an anode, a cathode, a filament, and a couple
Speaker 1: of magnets and um. The idea here is that you're
Speaker 1: generating a flow of electrons that go from the cathode
Speaker 1: to the anode. You use the magnets to alter the
Speaker 1: path of the electrons so that they spin in a
Speaker 1: Instead of going in a straight line, they go in
Speaker 1: a curve, and this curve gets tight and they start spinning.
Speaker 1: This is what generates the radio frequencies, the microwaves. And um,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I've I've read this description three or
Speaker 1: four times and then I realized, you know what we
Speaker 1: need to do send an email to stuff from the
Speaker 1: science lab and have them explain how magnetrons work because
Speaker 1: I think it's more science than tech at this point. Um,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty cool. There's some great illustrations on the
Speaker 1: web in various places that show you what the anode
Speaker 1: and the cathode look like. Um, the anode actually has
Speaker 1: chambers in it. Uh. And I read the technical description,
Speaker 1: like I said, three or four times, and I'm still
Speaker 1: not entirely certain exactly what the mechanics are or you know,
Speaker 1: the physics are behind this. But yeah, you uh, you
Speaker 1: pump the high voltage through and uh, you generate the
Speaker 1: electron flow. The magnets alter the the path of the electrons.
Speaker 1: That's what creates the radio frequencies, which will eventually cook
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you know, your Rama noodles or whatever
Speaker 1: that you're thrown in there. I've thrown out a lot
Speaker 1: of brand names. Yeah, you know today, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to do that. Well again, I'm thinking, like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't use microwave ovens as often as I used to.
Speaker 1: If I do use microwave oven it's to heat up
Speaker 1: something that I cooked in a more conventional method. Um.
Speaker 1: Mostly because the foods that tend to come design specifically
Speaker 1: for microwaves also don't tend to be very healthy, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to eat healthier now because I want to
Speaker 1: last a nice long time to to hunt your every
Speaker 1: waking moment. You know, I've seen green friendly websites talk
Speaker 1: about using microwave ovens because they use less energy, they
Speaker 1: are very efficient, um than conventional ovens, so you know
Speaker 1: there is an advantage in that. That is true. Um, However,
Speaker 1: I can't stand what they do to bread. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I can eat this for the next two seconds, so
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk very quickly about some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you shouldn't put in a microwave. Um.
Speaker 1: And honestly, people don't put this stuff in a microwave. Um.
Speaker 1: If if it doesn't hurt you, it will probably hurt
Speaker 1: your microwave. Yeah, if nothing else, you may end up
Speaker 1: damaging your microwave, which is not gonna win you any
Speaker 1: points in any household. But damaging yourself is certainly not
Speaker 1: good either, so please don't. So, for instance, have you
Speaker 1: seen any videos of someone who's cut a grape almost
Speaker 1: all the way in half and then microwaved it? Um?
Speaker 1: You know no, But I actually read a one of
Speaker 1: those questions by Mr Bloomfield. Um. Actually probably Dr Bloomfield.
Speaker 1: Um I was talking about blueberries because they were wondering
Speaker 1: why they're blueberries were catching on fire. He was saying, well,
Speaker 1: actually the blueberries are not technically catching on fire. But
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I'm thinking, what I think I know what's
Speaker 1: happening here. So you cut a grape almost in half
Speaker 1: until it's just being held together by the skin on
Speaker 1: one side. So you cut them long ways, put them on,
Speaker 1: say like an upturned coffee mug. You put set the
Speaker 1: microwave for you know, fifteen seconds or something, and then
Speaker 1: you'll start to see the grape spark and sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: see some pretty impressive sparks fly up out of the grape.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it might even catch on fire, and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: what the heck is happening here? Why are grapes doing this?
Speaker 1: The theory here is that the microwaves hit the grape,
Speaker 1: which then heat up very the grape. He's very quickly.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moisture in that grape which ends
Speaker 1: up gasifying. It turns into a gas exactly. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the thing is that first it's a gas, but the
Speaker 1: microwaves excite the gas, turning it into a plasma. So
Speaker 1: a plasma is an ionized gas. It's a gas in
Speaker 1: which free electrons are roaming around and it is uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of them. It is the most common
Speaker 1: form of matter in the universe. The sun is plasma.
Speaker 1: So you're you're technically turning a bit of that grape
Speaker 1: into plasma. It's it's the evaporation from the grape ends
Speaker 1: up being excited by the microwaves. That becomes an ionized
Speaker 1: gas and that's what you see when it sparks. Um
Speaker 1: and a lot of other materials will do similar things
Speaker 1: when you put them into a microwave. That will give
Speaker 1: off this um, this gas that can get excited by
Speaker 1: the microwaves. So yeah, don't do grapes um, don't put
Speaker 1: don't put eggs. Just like an egg in its shell,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't put that in the microwave. It
Speaker 1: will explode the the internal part of the egg will
Speaker 1: heat up to the point where the steam generated will
Speaker 1: be too great for the egg to maintain structural integrity.
Speaker 1: And then you have a massive mess. Bar of soap
Speaker 1: ivory soap, but there's another brand name for you. Put
Speaker 1: a bar of soap in there, and it ends up
Speaker 1: turning into a big foamy mess. But fortunately it's easy
Speaker 1: to clean because it's soap. Um actually might end up
Speaker 1: cleaning your entire microwave in the process, but I still
Speaker 1: don't recommend you to do it because you could end
Speaker 1: up burning yourself very badly. Um. Let's see what other
Speaker 1: things lightbulbs do. Not put any kind of lightbulb into
Speaker 1: a microwave. Yes, the microwaves can heat it up and
Speaker 1: make it light up in your microwave and it looks neat,
Speaker 1: but they will explode, which, first of all, that's incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 1: You're talking about shards of glass flying around. Uh. Second, well,
Speaker 1: if you're using a fluorescent light bulb, you've got some
Speaker 1: really nasty chemicals in there, like mercury that can be
Speaker 1: uh they're very toxic, and you don't want to release
Speaker 1: that into your environment. Peppers, you don't want the nuke
Speaker 1: peppers if you can help. But you know why, why
Speaker 1: not because they give off plasma, but because they will
Speaker 1: possibly release some steam that has kept say us in
Speaker 1: it and then you've just tear gas yourself. Nice ask
Speaker 1: me how I know this? Oh yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: our producer of the day, Matt it's also nodding and
Speaker 1: owning up to Mr Frederick and I apparently both enjoy
Speaker 1: these spicy foods. And we can tell you by the
Speaker 1: way nuking dried peppers particularly bad as I discovered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that. If you don't, if
Speaker 1: you value things like your eyesight and um and the
Speaker 1: love of those around you, because nothing, there's nothing quite
Speaker 1: like spraying pepper spray across an entire living area to really, um,
Speaker 1: you put a strain on relationships. You know. One other
Speaker 1: thing you don't want to do is overheat stuff you like,
Speaker 1: like a like a type of water superheating, yes, like
Speaker 1: quid And people think this is some kind of a myth.
Speaker 1: How how could water explode on you? Well, the thing
Speaker 1: is if you make a liquid too hot past the
Speaker 1: point at which it's going to boil, and if the
Speaker 1: container it's in is so smooth that there are no
Speaker 1: nuclayic sites there for the water to actually boil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean something generally, a liquid that boils needs something
Speaker 1: to boil on, like a pebble or something to introduce
Speaker 1: some some kind of irregular surface for it to start
Speaker 1: boiling on. If you uh, you know, NUCA cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and then decided to put sugar in it, you
Speaker 1: may suddenly have boiling coffee. What you've just done is
Speaker 1: you have introduced a nuclaic site into a superheated liquid,
Speaker 1: and then it's going to boil spontaneously, which looks a
Speaker 1: lot like an explosion um and can severely burn you.
Speaker 1: It can happen now most of the time. For this
Speaker 1: to happen, like I said, you need to have used
Speaker 1: some sort of very smooth vessel to hold the liquid
Speaker 1: because otherwise it's going to find nuclayic sites find not
Speaker 1: like find in a intelligent way. This is it's gonna
Speaker 1: latch onto any nuclei, excite and boil within the within
Speaker 1: the microwave itself. But if if it's like a very
Speaker 1: smooth ceramic mug and then you put some like non
Speaker 1: dairy creamer in it or some sugar something, it'll it'll
Speaker 1: use as a nucleay e site and just boil immediately.
Speaker 1: And sometimes just moving the cup will do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because then you know the liquid is now moving and
Speaker 1: it's it's incredibly dangerous. So yeah, you do need to
Speaker 1: be careful with that. A lot of microwaves now come
Speaker 1: with settings that are preset for certain things, including things
Speaker 1: like reheating a cup of coffee. Um, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff that the manufacturer has determined to be within the
Speaker 1: safe zone. So even then you should still be careful.
Speaker 1: But um yeah, good point. Glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Well, do you have anything else to say
Speaker 1: about that? Now? I find myself excited by microwaves too,
Speaker 1: so it was it's pretty cool. Oh well, you know,
Speaker 1: it ended up being an interesting subject. I'm actually I
Speaker 1: originally had a one way to wrap this up, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna change it up. I'm so just like just
Speaker 1: warning you, Pullette. Our listeners have no clue what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But we're gonna end with a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Matt from Marietta, Georgia, so
Speaker 1: right up the street. Hey, hey, Matt, I hope you've
Speaker 1: got enough bread and milk and toilet paper because I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, but it's snowing outside. Matt,
Speaker 1: says Chris and Jonathan, thank you very much for the
Speaker 1: informative podcast. I'm a new listener and have been trying
Speaker 1: to catch up on your previous episodes. I enjoyed your
Speaker 1: November eleven, two thou nine podcasts and was hoping to
Speaker 1: get a little more exposure to some of the topics discussed. First,
Speaker 1: could you explain a little about plasma generators while not
Speaker 1: cold fusion? You're back to the future reference made me
Speaker 1: think of trash consuming technology. Also, as of yet, time
Speaker 1: travel is not possible, and I'm gonna cut the rest
Speaker 1: of Matt's email because we're probably gonna use these for
Speaker 1: future episodes. Time travel is also probably something from stuff
Speaker 1: in the science lab, but he wanted to know about
Speaker 1: plasma generators and UH and trash. I actually wrote an
Speaker 1: article about plasma waiste converters a long time ago. It's
Speaker 1: one of my first articles while I was writing here
Speaker 1: and how stuff works. So um. In general, what you
Speaker 1: have is a plasma torch, which is again an ionized gas.
Speaker 1: You have a gas that's being UH that goes between
Speaker 1: two very powerful electrodes, which generates an electrical current. It
Speaker 1: ionizes the gas, and it generates an incredibly hot torch,
Speaker 1: a torch that's so hot that it can actually be
Speaker 1: hotter than the surface of the sun. You apply this
Speaker 1: torch to garbage and it either gasifies the garbage if
Speaker 1: it's all carbon based, or it turns it into it
Speaker 1: a it turns into slag, so you get too byproducts
Speaker 1: style of this. You get a gas and you get UH.
Speaker 1: First it's a liquid slag, but if you cool it
Speaker 1: it becomes solid um. It's pretty fascinating stuff. I would
Speaker 1: recommend reading the article. It goes into a lot more detail,
Speaker 1: but you can learn all about how ahaps using plasma torches,
Speaker 1: we could even create fuel from our garbage and UH
Speaker 1: eventually have something like a mr fusion, although again it's
Speaker 1: plasma plasma fication, not not called fusion. So thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: If any of you have any questions or suggestions, write us.
Speaker 1: Our email address is text uff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. We have articles about microwaves and other nifty
Speaker 1: gadgets on the site. To check that out and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again, possibly when it's
Speaker 1: snowing really soon. Plasma for moralness and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com and be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the new tech stuff blog now on
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