Ever heard of a microwave exploding, for that matter? Not the food - I mean the device. Ours just did.
OK, so I put a dish of soup in there, set it to six minutes, it ran, it went ting, I pressed “Door open” and BANG! - an explosion so loud that at first we couldn’t even work out where the noise had come from. Kitchen circuit tripped, microwave dead as a doornail.
It’s a difficult thing to google - no, I don’t mean food in the microwave, I mean the unit itself, goddammit! It was ten years old, so “faulty wiring” seems an unlikely explanation.
Any stories? Anyone even know what there is inside a microwave that can go bang like that?
Never had one go “bang!” but our family had one that was a couple decades old but still doing the job until one day it burst into flame. Weird blue fire licking around the outside and zappy little electrical sparks shooting around on the inside.
No flames, no sparks, nothing like that. I mean, after expiring that violently, I think you have a right to expect at least a smell of burning - but no, nothing like that at all.
Never cook an egg in its shell in a microwave oven. I was told that in the UK it was a test that new ovens had to pass - the door had to stay shut, even with an exploding egg.
The microwave at one place I worked failed that test spectacularly.
Our boss had a clever idea of how to cook an egg in a microwave. He knew that you couldn’t just put the egg in the microwave and turn it on, because the egg would explode. So he put the egg in a cup filled with water. His reasoning was that the water would boil, rather than the egg, and this would cook the egg.
I should point out that this guy was an engineer, with advanced degrees. He was running the company, after all.
It didn’t work. Despite his chain of logic, the egg still exploded. Taking the cup with it. Not to mention the microwave. The explosion blew the door off its hinges. And, of course, we had a mess of splattered egg remains everywhere. And had to get a new microwave oven.
A typical microwave oven contains a rather large high-voltage capacitor. Generally speaking, caps can definitely explode under some circumstances. Not sure if that’s the case for microwave oven capacitors in particular, but given that this sort of cap is being used in a power circuit (rather than some sort of electronic signal quality protection/filtering), it’s likely that it can contain quite a lot of energy when fully charged and could make for a substantial BANG.
If the event tripped your kitchen’s circuit breaker, then that means there was some kind of short inside the oven (instead of, or in addition to, a capacitor failure). Kitchen outlets/circuits are often rated for 20 amps, so a short on a kitchen circuit can make for a bigger bang than one on the 15-amp circuits that are typically used for much of the rest of a house.
I’ve never had one “explode”, but I had an old microwave start making disconcerting electrical arcing sound when it was running. Googling said it might have been a loose wave guide shield. It might have been fixable, but it was old and didn’t have a turntable, so I just replaced it.
Back in the mid-aughts there was a spate of computer motherboards with defective caps that would go “bang” seemingly at random. Or in my case, it was my video card that had defective capacitors. I was using my computer one day, when I heard a loud bang come from my computer. It was still running, and wasn’t on fire or anything so I shrugged and went back to what I was doing. A few months later it happened again. After a few more times the video card finally actually quit working (not all the decoupling caps are absolutely necessary for it to function under most circumstances), and when I opened up the case I saw all of the burst capacitors.
Thanks for the info, guys. Pleased to hear it isn’t just us - I had never heard of exploding microwaves before.
I envy your electrical skills, beowulff. But for a 10 year old microwave that I would have to find an electrician to fix… this time I vote with WildaBeast.
FTR #1: My loathing of white goods shopping is legendary. It just has to be got through as quickly as possible. One hour and fifty minutes later (including lunch) we had a new machine in place and installed.
FTR #2: We’re going through a phase of everything electrical failing at the moment. The cooker/oven hasn’t - yet. So we opted to build in some redundancy and got a combi microwave/oven/grill/god-knows-what-else. I feel oddly secure for the moment.
If you are the lazy sort who melts cheese in the microwave, don’t lazy out so much that you don’t chop the cheese into little bitty pieces, or grate it. Blocks of cheese melt like eggs cook, including blowing the door off and a gawd-awful mess all over the kitchen.
I wish I could remember how many I exploded. I say ‘I’ because I’m universally blamed for it around here.
Me and electronics don’t play nice, together.
That explains the bang I got out of my Taiwan-built microwave. The one in my current home needs replacing badly (door out of wack, this thing is from the mid 80s) but I haven’t got the dosh. I use the old fashioned oven when possible.
I only get cheap Micros.
After the first expensive one blew. Literally black marks on the countertop.
Just got a new one after Thanksgiving.
That one would not cook *raw cranberries w/o deciding to make an issue of it. The door flew open and hot cranberries pelted us all.
I realize cranberries are a problem to cook anyhow you do it. Tried to tell the young cooks. They never listen to me.
