Years ago in a text book of physiology of nerve and muscle........
No let me begin again. A few days ago I was softening some butter in a microwave oven that had previousely been in the fridge (the butter that is ) and after a few seconds microwaving attempted to spread the butter on my piece of bread. To my chagrin (lovely word - rarely get a chance to use it so forgive me), to my chagrin the butter, while melted to the point of liquification in some areas was still rock solid in others (and I'm talking a peice about 1 inch square) and I thought to myself 'what is this all about - surely on a rotating dish in a microwave for a few seconds a uniform level of softness should be achieved throughout the knob of butter. Then a thought occured to me. Years ago in a text book on 'The Physiology of Nerve and Muscle' I remembered reading that if you draw a line with your finger across a vertical plane of glass on which a heavy layer of condensation had settled, then rather than washing down the pane in a uniform wave the water gathers into droplets along the length of the line which run down the pane at the points of droplet formation only. The points where the droplets form along the line are determined by some totally unpredictable 'chaotic' complex system that draws the water together at those points along the line and not at other points. Could, I thought, the iregular softening of butter in a microwave be down to the same complex process that draws water to some points along a line drawn in condesation and not to others and more to the point what the hell did that have to do with the physiology of nerve and muscle
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
The microwaves being emitted from the magnetometer do not fill the entire volume of space inside the microwave. Because they are waves in this sense, there are interference patterns that cause areas where the microwaves do heat up the object and areas where they do not; regular convection heat equalizes the heat inside the object. If something hasn't been heated all the way through, then there will be areas where it didn't sufficiently melt.
Indeed. The microwave oven operates by forming a standing wave pattern inside; that is the reason for the rotating dish, to compensate for the uneven distribution of radiation. A few seconds isn't enough to get an even spread of energy.
Some guy has a few videos of a grid of metal studs the he places in the microwave so that he can see the spark patterns as the microwaves arc the metal. I can't recall the title but a search for "microwave" on YouTube should produce results quickly enough.
This idea is neither new nor original, but if you could focus the microwaves into a beam you could have a weapon that essentially cooks its target. This is the basis of the currect projected energy weapon that feels hot when it is directed at you.
Ideally, yes...but as far as I can tell this device could really only target maybe three people, depending upon how closely they are standing together. Still...apparently the beam is hot enough to cause you to move out of way so I don't know how useful it would be at real crowd dispersal. The other unknown is what would happen if you kept the beam directed at someone--would they really cook? That would disperse a crowd, especially if the person's clothes caught on fire.
I would rather be hit with the sonic beam and suffer only the headache, myself.
Hashi Lebwohl wrote:Ideally, yes...but as far as I can tell this device could really only target maybe three people, depending upon how closely they are standing together. Still...apparently the beam is hot enough to cause you to move out of way so I don't know how useful it would be at real crowd dispersal. The other unknown is what would happen if you kept the beam directed at someone--would they really cook? That would disperse a crowd, especially if the person's clothes caught on fire.
but if you're carrying lots of change and wearing lots of jewelry, you could put on quite a dancing lightshow for everyone.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
Vraith wrote:but if you're carrying lots of change and wearing lots of jewelry, you could put on quite a dancing lightshow for everyone.
Another reason I usually advise against facial piercings. (The typical reason is to avoid injury to the face--in a fight, facial piercings are the first thing you target, just grab them and pull really hard.)
Hmm... yes. This is pretty interesting stuff - Are there any other apps we can think of from a beam of microwaves other than cooking people from a distance ( a most ungentlemanly thing to do it seems to me) or getting them to move out of the way (an extreme form of crowd dispersal if ever there was one).
By the way I'm sorry guys. I'm not convinced by the 'standing wave' explanation of why the butter heats in this way. the liitle spots of totally liquified butter in a matrix of still very solid (err..) butter do not quite ring true for this to be the case - the heat differential is too great between the two to be explained in this way. So I'm sorry - close but no cigar!
By the way - I undertstand that a microwave works by battering the water molecules in food with microwaves set at the resonant frequency of water molecules, thus heating up the water in the same way that you give added height to a child on a swing by just adding a bit of extra energy with each push. Hmmm. If thats the case why can't we make a microwave that is set to a different resonant frequency so that it slows water molecule vibrations down and hence cools food (or more importantly wine) down at the rate that microwaves currently heat food up. Damn - that would be a usefull tool.
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
Butter is nothing but churned cream from the milk after separation; the milk solids are not going to be homogenous throughout the mixture but melt more smoothly and evenly.
Margarine is an emulsion of fatty acids in skim milk and/or water and looks awful when you microwave it--the water and milk separate out but the fatty acid globules take longer to melt.
peter wrote:
Hmmm. If thats the case why can't we make a microwave that is set to a different resonant frequency so that it slows water molecule vibrations down and hence cools food (or more importantly wine) down at the rate that microwaves currently heat food up. Damn - that would be a usefull tool.
That would be fun and cool...unfortunately, anything we can beam at the water adds energy, can't take it away. Still...a microwave freezer just sounds like a nice toy.
heh...you could make a cool scultpting tool with a hand beam with "forward" and "reverse" settings.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
Definitely Butter HL, unless Tesco's are getting even sharper than I thought they were!
Now Vraith - what exactly would you be sculpting with this 'Cool Tool' that you postulate - presumably not the butter from my earlier comment because we have already established that it is not amenable to microwave treatment in any predictable or useful fashion.
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
Adding some information: Microwaves causes things (molecules) to rotate. Specifically, in our conventional microwaves, it causes water to rotate. This rotational energy is the actual "heat" of the product.
If you don't have an even distribution of water in your butter, that could explain why some parts melt while others are cold as rocks.
Obviously, these microwaves cause more things to rotate than water (hence, the sparking metal).
Cell phones also operate on microwaves, they're just a different type.
'Tis dream to think that Reason can
Govern the reasoning creature, man.
- Herman Melville
I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all!
"All creation is a huge, ornate, imaginary, and unintended fiction; if it could be deciphered it would yield a single shocking word."
-John Crowley
No, I wouldn't sculpt butter...even the best restaurants wouldn't pay me enough to spruce up their presentation.
An aside...I'm pretty sure I read some sci fi thing where all our power was produced by solar collectors and nuke plants in space, and then microwaved to collectors/distribution nodes on the surface.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
Vraith wrote:An aside...I'm pretty sure I read some sci fi thing where all our power was produced by solar collectors and nuke plants in space, and then microwaved to collectors/distribution nodes on the surface.
Beamed power would be a wonderful idea, if it were technologically feasible. Right now, the closest thing we can get would be to use Tesla's beamed power--the node can be in the middle of your house and it powers all the devices you need.
Orloion - I think you may be coming close to what is going on in the microwaved butter here with the water distribution idea, though I do note that my original thesis about it's being in some way related to the water on the glass thing has not as yet been commented on. The idea would be something like - the microwaves hit certain water molecules in certain ways that makes them vibrate/spin more than the others who are not hit in this way. These 'extra vibrating/spinning molecules' in turn cause other localised water molecules to vibrate/spin more and a domino/snowball effect occurs where localised areas of the 'knob' gain heat much more rapidly than other areas where the initial spin/vibration conditions were less. This manifests itself in small areas where the butter melts (akin to the places where drips run down the glass plane) amongst the more solid matrix where it does not. It's most likely bollocks but hey - you gotta try aint ya'.
Re the beamed power in your home. Isn't this on the cards for pretty soon. I'm sure I read that it was only a matter of time before all plugging in of appliences would dissapear and that they would run on induced power(?) from a feild that would permeate the whole house.
re the cell phone microwaves - what is the difference other than perhaps in frequency range. I thought all these things were just part of the 'electro magnetic spectrum' and differed only in frequency rather than in nature. Hell - it's a long time since I was in school though so anything could be the case by now!
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
Well, yes...once you start heating a liquid a chaotic system results because of the turbulence created by the interation of warmer and cooler volumes of the liquid.
As far as the water forming droplets rather than falling uniformly you have to recall that the surface of the glass is not uniformly smooth, even though it appears that way to us. The variances in the surface will lead to places where the water is more able to collect itself and thus follow the path of least resistance.
peter wrote:Re the beamed power in your home. Isn't this on the cards for pretty soon. I'm sure I read that it was only a matter of time before all plugging in of appliences would dissapear and that they would run on induced power(?) from a feild that would permeate the whole house.
Plenty of devices already exist for inductively charging cellphones, cordless mice etc etc. It's just that such things needing charging need to have been designed to take inductive charge from day one, or you're in for an expensive retrofit of battery types and covers.
peter wrote:re the cell phone microwaves - what is the difference other than perhaps in frequency range. I thought all these things were just part of the 'electro magnetic spectrum' and differed only in frequency rather than in nature. Hell - it's a long time since I was in school though so anything could be the case by now!
I thought that absolutely anything and everything was a wave? Except when it's a particle, although I understand that some things are both... or possibly neither, but that may depend on whether a half-dead cat is looking at them at the time, or not.
In all seriousness, I wonder if there'd be any detectable perceptual difference between the expoundings of today's most gifted quantum physicists and the cosmic babblings of some hopped-up shroom-head who'd popped one purple microdot too many.
Newsflash: the word "irony" doesn't mean "a bit like iron"
Shockingly, some people have claimed that I'm egocentric... but hey, enough about them
"If you strike me down, I shall become far stronger than you can possibly imagine." _______________________________________________ I occasionally post things here because I am invariably correct on all matters, a thing which is educational for others less fortunate.
Yes Hashi - I think that is the way it works. I was going to say 'Events cluster' like droplets on the pane but then I realised that although the statement has a cetain 'euphony' about it, it's bollocks. (Talking of events clustering perhaps you guys can answer this one - do 'events cluster' for no more reason than cherries cluster in a cake, ie because in stirring the cake mix it's inevitable that some cherries will finish up closre together than others and this will give the final distribution a sort of clustered in some places and empty in others look - or does the term (if anyone else has ever come across it) refer to something more than that ie some 'thing' that draws the similar events (or indeed cherries) together).
Yes The Fallen - some of the things I hear on the popular science programs I watch are definitely boardering on the surreal and it does sometimes cross my mind that if a guy is so smart that only he can un destand where he is coming from who is to say that where he is coming from is not 'Cloud Cukoo Land' ps Shall we call S's cat Un-dead rather than half dead. I'm a cat lover and it just sits better with me
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
peter wrote:ps Shall we call S's cat Un-dead rather than half dead. I'm a cat lover and it just sits better with me
I'm reminded of the great Terry Pratchett... for those of you who aren't familiar with his oeuvres, shame on you. His character, Nanny Ogg, has a fearsome and violent tomcat named Greebo which in one of the Discworld novels goes to sleep in a box that inadvertently gets closed. As Pratchett points out with typical deadpan delivery, the hapless opener of said box who promptly gets his face clawed to ribbons, discovers that, contrary to popular thinking, there are in fact three possible states of a cat in a box... alive, dead or bloody furious.
Newsflash: the word "irony" doesn't mean "a bit like iron"
Shockingly, some people have claimed that I'm egocentric... but hey, enough about them
"If you strike me down, I shall become far stronger than you can possibly imagine." _______________________________________________ I occasionally post things here because I am invariably correct on all matters, a thing which is educational for others less fortunate.
) and after a few seconds microwaving attempted to spread the butter on my piece of bread. To my chagrin (lovely word - rarely get a chance to use it so forgive me), to my chagrin the butter, while melted to the point of liquification in some areas was still rock solid in others (and I'm talking a peice about 1 inch square) and I thought to myself 'what is this all about - surely on a rotating dish in a microwave for a few seconds a uniform level of softness should be achieved throughout the knob of butter. Then a thought occured to me. Years ago in a text book on 'The Physiology of Nerve and Muscle' I remembered reading that if you draw a line with your finger across a vertical plane of glass on which a heavy layer of condensation had settled, then rather than washing down the pane in a uniform wave the water gathers into droplets along the length of the line which run down the pane at the points of droplet formation only. The points where the droplets form along the line are determined by some totally unpredictable 'chaotic' complex system that draws the water together at those points along the line and not at other points. Could, I thought, the iregular softening of butter in a microwave be down to the same complex process that draws water to some points along a line drawn in condesation and not to others and more to the point what the hell did that have to do with the physiology of nerve and muscle 
