Basically there’s this ‘unique’ college friend of mine who suffers from eye floaters. I’ve been telling him to go to an ophthalmologist but the surgery to treat it costs $2000 and his parents health insurance doesn’t even come close to covering the cost. More importantly, the doctors are very reluctant.
So for some reason he decided that it would be a good idea to DIY it. Of course he doesn’t have any surgical instruments so ‘‘SOMEHOW’’ a microwave came to his rescue. He read how microwaves boil water instantaneously and how staring at one that’s been disassembled can cause the vitreous to boil separating the collagen fibers. HOWEVER the microwave energy also vitrifies the aqueous humor causing cataracts.
I tried to convince him no but he wont agree. From what I’ve read its a double danger situation. The vitreous starts boiling and becomes liquified scalding the retina and the aqueous humor becomes jelly like from being protein denaturation causing cataracts.
Make sure he takes vid of it and make sure you’re in another county with friends when he does it.
That way when he cripples himself at least he’ll have something to post on YouTube to hopefully go viral and earn him a few bucks to jump start his new career sitting on street corners with a tin cup.
And you being elsewhere with witnesses gives you the alibi you’ll need when he decides to blame you for the whole thing.
There’s no way this could possibly end well. If he’s lucky, the disassembled microwave emitter will either do nothing, or destroy itself before it does any harm
If he succeeds in heating his own eyes with microwaves, nothing good can happen. (Really, it should never be necessary to say that)
Why doesn’t he save himself the trouble of disassembling the microwave, and just gouge his eyes out with a spoon? That’d have the same effect, but be much easier.
Seriously, what does he think this would accomplish? Yeah, he’s figured out that he’d boil his eyeballs, but how is that supposed to help him in any way?
A very funny story. (Aqueous humor?) Is this really a friend or your “friend” who invented the story? It’s good either way.
Did you mention how he would do it? Find a huge microwave oven and stand in it? Holding a bag of popcorn and a potato while he’s at it? Magnetron won’t kick in, as pointed out, when the door is open. Or go the spoon method but leave the optic nerve attached, which is also doable.
King Lear had eye floaters, new research has revealed. Does your friend have some nasty daughters?
If you dissasemble the microwave oven, this safety mechanism, a simple switch, is easily defeated, even by someone daft enough to think microwaving your eyeballs is a good home remedy.
Just throwing this out there, but sticking your head in front of a live magnetron won’t just stop at your eyes. There happens to be another important organ right behind them.
That said, find a big enough microwave, stick your head in, and press “DEFLOAT”.
Actually, it might. Humans are mostly fat and water, which is great at absorbing microwaves. Your cooked face will probably provide quite good protection for your brain.
I would expect to feel heat for a fairly short duration (maybe a second or two, tops) followed by searing pain, at which point you’d be permanently blinded with no hope of ever recovering.
I stared at a magnetron disassembled from a microwave oven once (maybe several times) for minutes at a time, with no ill effects.
The circumstance was: My oven was getting a bit weak (I thought), and I had heard that older magnetrons tend to get weak, so I took my oven to a dealer to have a new magnetron installed. When I got it back, the dealer also gave me the old magnetron.
I took a good long look at it. It’s an ugly, nasty-looking device, just like you might imagine the main business component of a deadly ray-gun might look like (which is sort of what it is). Photo from Wili article, which also has several other photos and diagrams. Cutaway photo, showing inside of magnetron.
OP’s unique friend should be sure that his magnetron from his disassembled oven is not plugged in when he looks at it.
(You know what happens to the white [albumen] on an egg when you fry it? I’m imagining that fried vitreous humor does similarly.)
