Looking online apparently this damages the magnetron, but no one has found out why precisely. There are some pop-culture explanations that the reflected energy overloads the magnetron and so on, but I don't think anyone has done the parallel what this team has done to actually say what happens to the magnetron.
Everyone do yourselves a favor--go to a thrift store and buy a few microwaves. Find a field, string a hundred feet of extension cords from an outlet and start microwaving all the things your not suppose to.
My favorites:
Ivory soap--bubbles outward;
Grapes--see article;
Incandescent lightbulb --lights up;
Wine bottle--explodes, do this last
Also lots of things you think would be bad do nothing: spray paint can, soup can, silverware, cup of gas with aluminum foil in it.
Hit the [empty] wine bottle with a propane torch till a spot is glowing red before you start nuking it ... room temp glass is an insulator, hot glass conducts!
> The key, it seems, is cramming the energy present in microwaves into a very tiny space—the point of contact between the objects in question. In your garden-variety microwave oven, microwaves have a wavelength of about 12.5 cm. But adjoining grapes (which are full of water that can absorb said microwaves) can concentrate the energy within into a region where the two spheres touch, which is no more than a couple millimeters wide. This creates a very strong, very condensed electric field at their interface—a pocket of ammo powerful enough to liberate negatively-charged electrons from, say, the salts naturally present in grapes and other fruits.
This is the answer from the article. Not much else is said about the “how” piece
Not to worry. In high school, my friend and I used the cafeteria microwave for this particular experiment. It was only a modest, baby fire… and some yelling from a teacher. Miraculously no detention. But science was done on that day.
Readit News
Looking online apparently this damages the magnetron, but no one has found out why precisely. There are some pop-culture explanations that the reflected energy overloads the magnetron and so on, but I don't think anyone has done the parallel what this team has done to actually say what happens to the magnetron.
The PI has a website https://www.aaronslepkov.com/research but nothing new about this stuff there. I'm curious.
We know now why the plasma forms. I hope they're able to explain why the magnetron breaks.
How would one point camera at the magnetron and still keep it safe
https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ittew/what_is_...
(The plasma acts as a sort of antenna-- we maybe don't want 2 magnetrons pointing at each other :)
My favorites: Ivory soap--bubbles outward; Grapes--see article; Incandescent lightbulb --lights up; Wine bottle--explodes, do this last
Also lots of things you think would be bad do nothing: spray paint can, soup can, silverware, cup of gas with aluminum foil in it.
Draw on paper with a lead pencil - it burns out the pencil lines. Perfect for making pirate maps.
This is the answer from the article. Not much else is said about the “how” piece
This is the paper cited: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1818350116
If you did a report, it counts as science.
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