• Madison420@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nope, it just doesn’t happen. It’s an illusion of sorts, the plate isn’t being heated because microwaves work essentially on shaking water molecules. Ceramics and plastics are ultra low water content, put a plate in the microwave by itself and it won’t be hot.

      What you’re noticing is the plate heating because the food is heating and the food is transferring heat to the plate, not the other way round.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        A simple refutation is that metal gets hot in the microwave, and it has no water in it. Microwave radiation heats many things, not just water

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Different principle entirely but ask a physicist, I’m not telling you to trust me. I’m telling you to look, learn, and experiment.

          Ed: Here’s a hint. The first microwave was called a radarrange.

          • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            But I have experimented… I’ve melted plastic spoons in the microwave before. Where’s the water in plastic?

            Edit: that’s not really a hint. What does radar have to do with how microwaves heat things?

            • Madison420@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Those aren’t microwave safe then, other materials react as well but microwaves are tuned to shame water really well and most everything else not as well.

              Yes it is. Microwaves came from radar and radar works on the same principal.

              Ed:

              In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer’s microwave oven was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.[12][13]

              To verify his finding, Spencer created a high-density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly. On 8 October 1945, Raytheon filed a United States patent application for Spencer’s microwave cooking process, and an oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed in a Boston restaurant for testing.

      • Someology@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s the many tiny air bubbles trapped in low quality ceramics that vibrate and heat it up.

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Possibly, feldspar content can have an effect as well in ceramic but in general the plate is not doing the heating or being heated. An ideal ceramic plate or plastic plate doesn’t heat until you get real crazy and manage to hit a frequency it likes.