Not all things made of metal in all microwaves will spark.
The microwaves will induce a current in the metal, and they will only spark if the conditions are right. Things like the size, shape, and type of metal, as well as the power and exact wavelength of the microwaves all affect whether or not a current is induced. And even if there is a current in the metal, it won’t always make a spark, it has to be able to “arc” to something.
But even without arcing to anything, just having a current in the metal can heat it up, so it might still cause something touching it to smoke or burn.
I’m guessing the metal rack came with the microwave, and so obviously the manufacturer designed it so it could be used safely with their microwave.
You can’t be stripped of citizenship as punishment for a crime, but you can be if you obtained your citizenship by means of fraud. Example. If you obtained your citizenship by birth, then obviously that doesn’t apply.
It was actually a Nintendo Wii they were trying to win. The contest was called “Hold your wee for a Wii.” If you had to go pee or you threw up you lost the contest. The woman died from too much water.
The most likely scenarios would be passing out in a way to cause your death through either hitting your head on something, otherwise damaging yourself in the course of falling or due to how far you fall, or passing out in a situation where your survival depends on consciousness, such as driving a car.
An unlikely scenario would be dying of severe sleep apnea while unconscious. Ondine’s curse would do it.
Otherwise, you can only hold your breath long enough to pass out, at which point your unconscious body resumes breathing as normal.
My dumb question: In the movie Psychomania (1973), who the hell thought those goggles would be anything other than hilariously goony?
Turner Classic Movies is great, isn’t it? I love a movie channel that, one, shows uninterrupted, unedited, and complete movies with no bullshit, and, two, isn’t afraid to run the gamut and pander directly to niche interests, like silent buffs and crap fans and foreign lovers.
Compare TCM to AMC. TCM’s between-movies lagniappes are more entertaining than a lot of the crap that gets on AMC. The fact those little shorts are the vast majority of their original programming certainly helps.
Now, another dumb question: How come original programming’s gotta suck so bad? It doesn’t always, but more often than not it’s the harbinger of network decay and its fell horseman, reality TV.
Also: Is the evening news reality TV? It’s supposedly reality, and it’s on TV.
The radio waves inside of a microwave oven are going to cause eddy currents in the metal. Charge is going to build up around edges (especially sharp edges), and as a result if any two edges are close to each other they will cause arcing. Since metals aren’t superconductors the eddy currents will also generate heat. If it’s a thin piece of metal then the metal can get very hot and melt or burn. Thicker metal will not get as hot.
So, steel wool makes not only an interesting spark show from the arcing, but also will burn from the metal heating. Your typical spoon will get hot if it is left in the microwave for a long time, but for a short duration most spoons are thick enough that they won’t get very hot at all. Even a fork won’t usually arc. The tines on a typical fork are too far apart to get arcing. That gray surface on microwave dinner boxes is a metallic film that is designed to get hot so that it helps cook or at least brown your food. The box obviously doesn’t typically burst into flame when you use it.
If the coin has ridged edges you might get some arcing across the ridges, and depending on the design of the coin you could theoretically get some arcing across some of the engraved features. For most typical coins I wouldn’t expect much of anything to happen except that the coin would get warm after a while.
Any time you put metal in a microwave you risk reflecting part of the radio waves back into the magnetron (the spinny thing that generates the radio waves), which can be a bit harsh on the magnetron and might cause it to break. The magnetrons in older microwaves were much more delicate and easily broken than the magnetrons of more recent microwaves. You can put a metal rack that was made for that microwave into it since it is designed not to reflect waves back into the magnetron, but you don’t want to put any arbitrary metal rack into any microwave because there is a small chance that you can break the microwave due to reflections.
You shouldn’t run a microwave empty for the same reason. You always want something inside of the microwave to absorb the radio waves so that they don’t end up eventually bouncing back into the magnetron and causing it some damage.
For microwave fun, try a CD (warning - the CD will be instantly and totally ruined), steel wool, a broken light bulb (the old fashioned filament type, not a CFL), or cut a grape almost in half so that only a tiny bit of the grape’s skin is holding the two halves together. Note that there is a small risk of damaging the magnetron when you do stuff like this.