An unusal phonemenon can occur to those who like to warm their hard-boiled eggs in a microwave. However, if overheated, the eggs can explode quite violently once poked by a fork. (A co-worker of mine received burns on the cornea from this!) What do the SDopers know about this? Can it be prevented (read on)? (And, yet why don’t hot dogs exhibit this same behavior?)
WAG: Well, not so wild-assed: From my education, I know that water vapor needs a rough surface upon which the vapor bubbles form. (Similar rules are true as to how ice forms, so it is possible to have liquid water below 32 F, 1 atm). However, if a surface is too smooth, the bubbles cannot form and boiling is suppressed. The water is acting like a compressed (sub-cooled) liquid. Once the egg is poked, conditions instantly change allowing the water to flash to steam - and exploding the egg in the process.
If this is all true, the question is: Can this be prevented by cutting the egg in half? Poking some holes in the white part? I feel it is possible that the water remains evenly distributed throughout the albumen (white), and thus, no amount of poking will totally assure that the egg won’t explode. On the other hand, I WAG hot dogs (a) deform when overheated in a microwave, but might explode - unsure because here poking holes and/or cutting in half longitudinally helps reduce the deforming.
Any SDopers experienced the exploding egg thing and/or care to WAG? Or, have any SDopers seen an uncut, unpoked hot dog react in the same violent manner?
:eek: I don’t know anything about this, but thanks for the warning. I’ve done some stupid things when tired. I remember seeing sparks inside the microwave once but can’t recall if I left foil or a utensil in there.
Is it not possible that hard egg white is less permiable than sausage skin (or whatever hotdogs are covered with)? Also, as you note, I suspect that the hotdog is structurally weaker and tends to automatically distort/split under pressure, thus releasing gasses rather than allowing the problem to build up.
Another piece of eggy/microwave lore concerns putting an egg (shell & all) in for 2 minutes on high. The noise as it explodes is great, but the smell & cleaning aren’t so fun .
the egg shape is a very strong structure and can sustain a LOT of pressure internal OR external. as long as the pressure remains relatively equal it could withstand quite a bit of internal pressure before the structure would fail. weakening in any point though would cause an immediate collapse of the rest of the structure.
This was on TV a couple of weeks ago along with other investigations into microwave-lore (instant boiling of superheated water, etc.)
In their tests, they said that inside the microwave, the egg sometimes doesn’t heat evenly, which causes some parts of the egg to become extremely hot, while another part is relatively cool (as opposed to boiling, which they said heats fairly evenly). This temperature difference can cause the egg to burst when cut or bitten, perhaps because of pressure differences, like Rhapsody mentioned. According to the show, bursting occured in about 20 of 100 trials.
Just a side note, for the demonstrations, the station kept making one of their employees break open or bite into the eggs with nothing but eyeglasses for protection. I hope the guy got hazard pay, because it looked really painful. Normally, I’d say it was a put-on, but Japanese networks have a reputation for brutalizing their staff.
A guy (Jeremy Clarkson) on UK TV has a chat show on which he does silly experiements with household items.
In one such experiment he put eggs in a microwave and turned it on, and the explosion blew the door off the oven and about 20Ft across the studio. Quite impressive explosive power really.
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