So, what happens if you reach for the chocolate mousse or “Scotch, Chevas Regal and water, no ice” too fast and it materializes around your hand?
There’s nothing to grab until it materializes.
Yeah, but if you stick your hand in while it is shimmering? :rolleyes:
You probably can’t. Today’s maicrowaves have a safety shutoff that shuts down the waves when you open the door. In Roddenberry’s PC future, the safety nazis would make sure the replicators were foolproof.
Just like the holodeck. 
This is the 24th century. People know to use the communication system only when needed, and won’t do silly things like stick their hands in the replicator while it’s trying to drum up a meatball sub.
Yes, but if they were passing through a Tachyon storm as they were replicating a plate of Spaghetti and Meatballs, this could lead to the creation/summoning of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, couldn’t it?
Jim
Yeah, you also need a securitiy overide to get real chocolate and booze. Damn synthehol.
Well, if they’re passing through a tachyon storm they’re under at least yellow alert, if not red alert. They wouldn’t be eating. I would assume extra systems are shut down (holodecks, food replicators) during alerts so power can be concentrated to shields and weapons.
Very well Ms. Spock, your logic prevails as usual. 
Jim
You see, I’d really question that. The amount of power used by the replicators and such is trivial compared to the energy needed to power a warp drive, or the shields. If they ran them off the same system, it would be stupid.
:smack: Oops. I forgot. This the Roddenberry Universe, where they don’t even have circuit breakers!
Not around your hand. It crams the chocolate mousse molecules between those in your hand and this disrupts your tissue. Afterwards you miss a few fingers, but you have a bowl of chocolate/flesh mousse.
Yeah…don’t mess with my Star Trek.
Everyone knows the chocolate mousse materializes to your hips!
“The ship went through an ion storm just as I was synthesizing my favorite aphrodisiac, and I was thrown into the food replicator. The computer got… confused; there weren’t supposed to be two genetic patterns in the machine, so it decided to… splice us together. My food synthesizer turned into a gene splicer… and a very good one; now I’m not Terrifel anymore. I’m becoming… TerrifelSpanishFly.”
One assumes that the food replicators include some sort of proximity sensor, of the same general type as the ass-cheek detectors that keep starships from firing all its photon torpedoes every time someone casually leans against one of those touch consoles. Of course, one would also assume that the transporter systems, which are intended to be used on actual people, would be even more foolproof, which illustrates the danger of making unwarranted assumptions. Given the enormous frequency of transporter-related cockups over the years, I’d guess that any number of Federation citizens have been accidentally merged with their French dip sandwich. I can’t see a food replicator mishap meriting an entire episode, although if Voyager had lasted for another season I wouldn’t have put it past them.
“Fascinating, Captain. This green bean casserole is physically identical to the first, yet the duplicate is pure evil.”
My main problem with the food synthesizer is that it’s entirely voice-activated. Evidently you just speak the name of a food item out loud, and the machine immediately produces it. You don’t even have to go to the trouble of pushing a button or anything before gording out. Yeah, it’s nice that the future has all these work-saving gadgets and all, but come on; how lazy are you? You can’t even be bothered to lift your flaccid arm to push a damn button? No wonder every other species in the Galaxy thinks humans are total pansies.
And what happens when you contract Rigelian flu? Every time you hack up a wad of phlegm, the food synthesizer hears you and churns out another Klingon appetizer. Some of those things move on their own power; by the time you haul your ailing carcass over to the machine, that snack’s already crawled under the counter and started laying its eggs.
Replicators can’t make live food. Now that’s just silly.
Why do you think Guinen was so highly paid? They had to come to 10-Forward to get all of the REALLY dangerous drinks, because it required a highly trained staff to know precisely when it was safe to reach in there. Guinen was on her third pair of hands.
I beg to differ. On Voyager they had replicator rations. Obviously base matter from which to replicate stuff isn’t hard to come by, so that leaves the need to conserve energy. Think about it - the replicator, in just a few seconds, places untold numbers of quarks and electrons in just the right places and quantum states to form complicated organic molecules. That’s an energy usage rivalling the transporter.
Also, in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (gawd I’m such a geek) Tasha Yar mentions to Lt. Castello that in order to conserve resources, the replicators are all rigged to only produce some basic rations. So, it’s mentioned on screen (and not openly contradicted later on), so it’s canon. Is it stupid? Perhaps, but perhaps for a spacefaring starship designed to be away for years at a time, high power consumption (from what seems to be a nigh-undrainable source of fuel, if not a bottomless capacitor which the equipment draws power from) is prefered over carrying 5 years worth of TV dinners and sodas.
There’s a great scene is Stranger In A Strange Land, where all you have to do to get dinner is push a button on the autochef, and a couple argues over whose turn it is to make dinner.
Why do we need remotes? Can’t we walk to the tv? <Channelling African tribeswoman>You don’t have to carry it on your head to the river, you don’t have to take each piece out and scrub and beat it on the rocks, you don’t have to carry it all back to your hut and hang it to dry–all you have to do to dirty laundry is throw it in a box and push a button, and you’re sitting around bitching about it!? Americans!</Channelling African tribeswoman> They are pansies, and so are we.
I just hope 24th-century replicators are easier to program than 20th- and 21st-century computers, or by the time I’ve taught one how to make Hung Sue Falafel, Mom’s tuna salad, and my recipe for baked macaroni, I won’t have saved much work.
or VCRS…“It’s always tuna salad in my replicator.”
(From the book, “It’s Always 12:00 On My VCR.” Humor. It is a difficult concept.)