Reading the nuked cockroach article reminded me of the UL of the woman who tried to dry off her dog after a bath by putting it in the microwave. I was wondering. What would it be like to be microwaved?
Also, I live in a dorm with a communal kitchen in the basement. In the kitchen, we have an 1800 watt industrial strength microwave that can set EZ Mac on fire in roughly 30 seconds. What would happen if all of hte sudden the door fell off? I really have no clue how the actual radiation itself behaves.
At my uni they had microwaves in the eating areas, and they didn’t always work well. One of them would stay on until you smacked it around a bit, which is how I managed to microwave my arm.
It felt exactly like I thought it would, the skin getting warm. If you were using a big industrial microwave, your skin would get warm faster.
There have been attempts to use microwave technology for home heating. Other than the huge resistance from the populus, it’s a fairly neat idea: just heat the people in a room, rather than all the stuff. The only big problem is that eyes don’t shed heat as well as skin, so if you get too much your eyes get cooked.
A week or so ago, I had a stunningly good, med-rare NY strip steak. I was reading and let the steak get cold. I asked the server to warm it up and rather than getting the cooks to put it under the broiler or even on the grill, she micro-waved it.
What had been stunningly good steak became steak-flavored cardboard. I have no idea why. It was a horrible experience, going from great to ucky.
Don’t ask about the size of the tip, please.
Similar experiences at home caused me to heave my microwave into the trash years ago. I worry about so-called “shelf-life-extended” meat at the grocery store. :rolleyes:
To actually be microwaved, like the dog or baby or whatever UL you’ve heard lately, would at first be like Wikkit described. Your skin would start to feel warm. It would quickly get up to the point of causing a very deep tissue burn, which would be quite painful (as anyone who works around Radar or radio equipment and has received an RF burn can attest to). An all over, very deep painful burn would definately not be a pleasant way to go.
If the door falls off a conventional microwave, and the latch that tells the sensor that the door is open goes with the door, then the safety system would shut the microwave off. If, however, the door sensor was somehow fooled into thinking the door was still on, then you would get a nice blast of radio waves. Depending on how close you are, you might get a rather nasty RF burn from it. RF burns feel like regular burns, except since the microwaves penetrate into your skin they end up being fairly deep burns.
Guess I should point out that RF = Radio Frequency. It’s just another term for radio waves.
Radio waves tend to break down complex molecules, which is why the ruin the taste of steak, tea, and many other foods.
