Microwaves Shake Water
All scenes › Chapter 1 Where the Waves Come From
How Does It Heat Without a Flame?
No flame and no hot plate, yet the food gets hot
View in 3DHow does it heat without a flame?
A gas stove heats food with a flame, and a toaster uses hot metal. But inside a microwave oven there is no flame and nothing hot. Even so, a bowl of soup is warm in two minutes. So what is doing the heating? The answer is hidden in a box on the side.
Why?The air and walls inside a microwave oven barely warm up. Only the food gets hot. That tells us the microwave works differently from cooking tools that heat food from the outside.
Learn moreIn this project, the example oven’s inner box is 31.5 cm wide, 21 cm tall and 32.5 cm deep. Every number on screen is calculated for that size. It is a generic example, not any real product.
- One microwave oven (example)
- about 50 cm
textbook formulas · example oven cavity 31.5 × 21 × 32.5 cm
View this scene in 3D →Read more
More in the series
Wavelength, standing waves and the properties of water are calculated with textbook formulas. The standing-wave pattern is a simplified sum of the metal box’s resonant modes; water’s properties come from the Debye model (water at 20 °C). In the 3D view, waves and molecules move far slower than in real life, and the water molecule is an enlarged model.