How does a microwave oven work?

How does a microwave oven work?

Image credit: wikipedia.org

  Our ancestors would have loved to cook food in microwave oven rather than that smoky fire. 

How was a microwave invented?

  Actually, microwave oven is one of the accidental discoveries done by an American electric engineer Percy Spencer. He carried a chocolate with a magnetron (a high powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves) in his pocket and for his surprise, the chocolate melted. Thus he concluded that microwaves can generate heat. And then was made the first microwave oven.

How does a microwave oven work?

  But how do microwave ovens work exactly? We know that they have a magnetron which produces microwaves which produce heat after hitting the food. Let's understand in a bit deep... Here are the steps of cooking of food...

1. Microwave oven is a strong metal box. Inside it, there is a magnetron, basically a microwave generator. As you start cooking, the magnetron takes electricity from the power outlet and conversion it into radio waves of 12cm. The waves are very powerful.
2. Once these waves are generated, the magnetron blasts these waves into the food compartment through a tube like channel called as a Waveguide.
3. The microwaves bounces back and forth of the reflective metal walls of the microwave oven before the reach the food on the turntable. 
4. When the microwaves reach the food, they don't just bounce and come. They bring many vibrated molecules which were there in their path.
5. These vibrating molecules have heat. Thus the heat gets transferred to the food on the rotating turntable. The turntable rotates so the food cooks evenly. The food becomes hotter and thus microwaves finally get converted into heat.

  Exactly how food cooks in a microwave oven depends completely on what it is made up of, what is the shape of the food and the contents of the food. Like fluids heat better in microwave ovens than solids.

Conclusion:

  So basically working of a microwave needs only 5 simple steps as noted below:

1. Magnetron generates microwaves.
2. These waves reach the food compartment via waveguide.
3. Microwaves bounce off the walls of oven.
4. They vibrate molecules in their path.
5. These molecules transfer heat to the food.

Posts before October 2021 have been marked as "Old Posts". Less likely, but they might have out dated or incorrect information, ugly looking bits of code, no labels, etc. Don't get me wrong, many of these posts are top-notch and interesting too.

I thought it would be better not to delete or revamp these posts, even if they suck. The bitter truth is that old works always suck, but I take that as a positive tool to convey that I am growing. Besides there's no better way to showcase my journey without these old, messy, poorly written posts!

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