# Cloase Call for Roach in Microwave **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 1, 2002, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cloase-call-for-roach-in-microwave/130408 "2002-10-01T15:34:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![david\_birkhead\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@david\_birkhead\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/david_birkhead_1)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2002, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cloase-call-for-roach-in-microwave/130408/1 "2002-10-01T15:34:49Z")
From the article ‘I nuked a roach! He didn’t die! Why?’ (dated 24 Sept. 1982), I think a point was missed. [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1\_025.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_025.html) A quick look on the Internet yielded this ([http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/micro.html](http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/micro.html))… ``` Microwaves have wavelengths that can be measured in centimeters! The longer microwaves, those closer to a foot in length, are the waves which heat our food in a microwave oven. ``` I remember seeing on a German nature program that ants are too small to be cooked in a household microwave. The microwaves in a home appliance cook by aligning the molecules in the oven with the pulse from a microwave source (magnetron), them flipping the source so the molecules align in a different way. This molecular friction heats things up. Certain molecules work better than others. I think I remember hearing that microwave ovens are tuned to tweak water atoms. So, water atoms are really tiny, and roaches have water, so why do roaches and German TV stunt ants not go boom? I think we are looking at wave lengths and water volume (well spotted in the previous article). The longer the wave length, the less likely that it will mess with the stuff around it. More or less, depending on certain affinities for certain molecules with certain substances, stuff density and volume. Nice thing about certain frequencies of microwaves; heating up stuff with water but not so much the plates. Take a dried roach and an equal volume of butter. Nuke the hell out of them. The roach gets only a bit warm (due to the lack of molecular/wave-length affinity) and the butter becomes a stinky mess. Use a vacuum to increase the lack of effect on the roach. Note that I said ‘you’. I’m not eager to make a mess in my microwave or make it icky with mummified bug bits. So, small bugs have most of the microwave radiation pass harmlessly through, being that they are made up of not enough of the right stuff. The radiation they do catch can be out of phase (less molecular friction) or just too inconsistent to build up. Like wind blowing a swing-set. I guess you could get ‘lucky’ and get a ‘Tacomma Narrows’ roach execution after a good long while. But I’d say that would be a really sad way to spend your free time. Remember thats coming from a geek that watches German nature programs. You may be wondering how can viruses get nuked in microwave? OK, maybe not. But viruses are super small and not always juicy. Simple answer, they don’t. But the do get cooked along with the sub-straight. If stuff they are in gets good and cooked, they’ll get cooked right along. The truly disgusting will automatically jump to the experiment of filling a microwave with roaches and then nuking them. Yes it will probably work, having a large volume of low moisture density roaches. But you’ll never have a good nights sleep again. I’m probably going to avoid using my microwave for a week after just thinking about it. Simple way to increase effect would be to add a sub-straight. Entice the bug victim with an oily rub down or whirlpool bath, then nuke them. I hope this helps, but I know that it really shouldn’t. David Birkhead ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2002, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cloase-call-for-roach-in-microwave/130408/2 "2002-10-01T20:17:01Z")
According to [this guy,](http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/microwave.asp) the reason ants can survive being microwaved is because they find dead spots (cool spots) in the microwave pattern, which all microwave ovens have. > [@](#): > > Ants can survive being “nuked” in a microwave? Microwave ovens have patterns of standing waves, with hot, very high-density areas, and cold, very low-density areas. Ants in the oven seek out the cold areas, and dodge the hot ones. If they run into a high-density area, they will survive, because their high surface area to volume ratio cools them more quickly than the ratio of large objects, and buys them enough time to locate a cold spot. Which is what Cecil said, kinda. > [@](#): > > Uneven heating to some extent is inherent in microwave cookery.