Happy new year, everyone!
It is good to be here in 2018 but it is better to have you here. It would be awesome if we would all be here in 2019.
A Little Bit of Background...
I was born in a little village that was at least two hours from the nearest city. Ironically, being born and later raised in this small village was by design and not by accident. My parents, especially my father wanted to be in full control of the influences his children were exposed to.
Consequently, most of the things I knew as a teenager were things my parents taught me. And oh, there way no television: my father gave it away. We had a black and white television that was only turned on at 9:00 pm for news. Good old days!
Well, the point is that I didn't know much about anything until I went to the university. Microwave ovens were one of those things I knew nothing about even though we had the traditional electric and gas powered oven in the house.
It is perhaps due to my limited knowledge about things that I'm curious about technology and how stuff works. So how exactly does a microwave oven warm food? Does using microwave ovens cause cancer? Is it harmful to use a microwave oven over an extended period of time?
What is a Microwave Oven?
A microwave oven is a type of oven that cooks and warms food items by blasting the food with high-powered radio wave.
Pixabay image: A modern kitchen showing a microwave oven
The wavelength of these radio waves are usually of the order of 12 cm. The microwave oven heats food through the means of a horribly complicated piece of equipment, the Magnetron or Cavity Magnetron
In the 1940's, an American scientist, Percy Spencer, while working on a microwave piece of equipment, he realised that the equipment made the chocolate in his pocket to melt. This started a series of development that ended in the modern day microwave oven.
Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 show different aspects of the magnetron as was patented by Percy Spencer. In figure 3, the inner copper core (anode) and the outer copper core (cathode) are bound by North and South Pole of a magnet.
How Does the Magnetron Produce Microwaves?
Basically, the Magnetron produces short radio waves. It does this by resonating much like a flute except that the frequency at which it resonates is neither in the range that humans hear nor see. Below is an illustration of what goes on in the Magnetron.
First, there is the cathode which is shown in the figure as copper rod (1). When voltage is passed through it, it emits negatively charged electrons that move in a straight line (3) to the copper tube anode (2)
However, due to the presence of a powerful magnet underneath the cathode, producing a field that is parallel to the cathode, the straight line journey of the electrons are bent into a cyclical one (5), much like the figure below:
The holes carved into the anode, called cavities or resonant cavities has a similar effect on the electrons as the air blown into a flute or a bottle. When air is blown perpendicular to the mouth of a bottle, it resonates with a sound. Electrons passing through the edge of the cavities experience similar effect as they pass energy to the cavities making them resonate at the frequency of the microwave radiation it produces. Of course, in this case, the waves are invisible.
The microwave radiation is collected by some form of waveguide (7) and used in a radar system or in this case, microwave oven. The waveguide directs the radiation to the food compartment of the microwave oven where the food sits on a rotating turntable in order to be cooked evenly.
So How Does a Microwave Cook Food?
Well, when the microwave pass through the food items, it vibrates the molecules of the food passing energy to them and heating them up. Because the food items are rotating, and the radiation passes through, heating is more uniform. The only risk is overheating and loss of nutrients in the food. It also turns out that the vibration is more effective in fat, sugar and protein which are basically the main components of food.
Is Microwave Oven Dangerous to You?
It is easy to fall into the temptation of thinking that once it is called radiation, then it must be harmful. But the wavelength of the radio waves involved in a microwave oven are much different from that of x-ray and gamma rays. In order to put this in perspective, examine the image below.
As can be seen from the figure above, the frequency of the microwave radiation is just between that of radio and the visible spectrum. So, apart from burning your food if overexposed, microwave oven presents no known health dangers.
I hope this has been informative for you. I'd like to thank you for visiting my blog.
It's your boy Kels,
@churchboy
Very informative article. Thank you. I must say, I do have a microwave but I use it sparingly these days. I have a microwave radiation detector that I use to analyse hot spots in my house from a nearby mobile phone antenna. The microwave oven when in use has off the scale readings all around it, including through a wall behind it. The disruption of molecules cannot be good for the body in my opinion. I therefore use it to occasionally defrost food if I have forgotten to leave it out to defrost naturally and I make scrambled egg with it. Actually the microwave makes excellent scrambled eggs if you just blast it for 30 seconds at a time and keep mixing it in between until its firm and fluffy.
Thanks for the post.
Thanks for visiting my post today. Actually, I didn't know that one can make scrambled eggs with a microwave oven. I have a brother who just refused to purchase a microwave oven. He is convinced that the stuff would give him cancer. I appreciate your comment. Thanks a lot.
it gives people cancer
Educative article. Thanks.
Yay! Real science, love it! I do hate when people see radiation and think cancer!!! :/
It is people who follow popular opinion. Thanks for reading
Very informative post. It's really nice and meanful. You have really helped lots of people who visit your blog and provide them usefull information.
Thanks for this article.
Thanks for the kind compliments. We can only do what we can in putting up posts that provides useful information.
This is an interesting take on this topic that is often misconstrued. Thanks for sharing. Do steem on.
Thanks a lot for your kind comments. Yes, it is easy to hear radiation and fear cancer.
Very informative thanks
Thanks for the compliment
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Microwave is quite a great technology, just within minutes you can get your food warm by just turning a knob.
Yes, indeed. But we have so programmed our minds that once there is pleasure, there must be pain. So even when there is no apparent pain, we go looking for one. Thanks for coming around.
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Thanks for the support
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I absolutely love how you first provide a very strong scientific basis then detail your opinion after. It really allows the reader to gather the necessary information before also seeing what you do! Such a great format! Also, I cannot tell you how many times I've heard about microwaves being "this that and the other," therefore, reading a blog like this that very briefly debunks those talks with ease is such a breath of fresh air!
Thank you so much. I have also heard all that. At a point, I began to think that there must be some truth to it so I decided to look it up. Guess what I found :). I'm so glad you liked the post. You're awesome.
Absolutely! Keep it up!
Thank you for the support. You encourage me.
So can one use any kind of plates to microwave food ? Because i heard you should strictly use the glass plates not the plastics , how true is that also ?