Oolite Bulletins

A friend's little boy slipped her lighter unseen into her microwave just before she put a cup of tea into it to heat it up. She then went into his bedroom to change his nappy.

Apparently the explosion lifted her off her feet. Quite a bit of the kitchen wall was missing, the microwave door vaporised except for the hinges and the glass tray went out through the opposite window and travelled several hundred feet into the field next door to her house. They found the sparker for the lighter in the bottom of what was left of the microwave chamber (which is how the fire brigade worked out what had happened) but no trace of the cup of tea was ever found...

the glass tray went out through the opposite window and travelled several hundred feet into the field next door to her house.

Hmm... I just replaced out microwave, and the old one still works... A few extension cords, a lighter.

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

wouldn't recommend it.. but it works with any metal.

Yep, the microwawes must have heated up and ignited the gas, then the metal casing of lighter (if it was the metal one) worked pretty much like frag grenade.

Bowl of gasoline with metal spoon in it... ooh fun
Or a little mini camping propane tank?

Microwave can't heat up propane. It heats only the moisture. Then again, you don't need to heat up the propane for it is quite combustible at room temperature.

What happened in there is this:
Microwave heated up the moisture inside the metal and plastics (that's why you can't put every kind of plastic container in it). Moisture in a lighter's plastic expanded and deformed it enough so the fumes can escape, and moisture in the metal parts produced sparks. (actually, small explosions)

Instant 4th of July.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

...but no trace of the cup of tea was ever found...

It is still traveling. It probably passed Mars.

(Idea for OXP?)

Real experiment to do with a microwave - take a glass mixing bowl and turn it upside down inside the microwave, take a piece of cork from a bottle of wine (i.e. proper cork - not a plastic one) and set fire to it. Now it should just smoulder rather than burning with flame - once it's smoking nicely put it in the microwave underneath the glass bowl - close door - wait 30s or so (this is a bit of guess work it varies from cork to cork) - what should happen is that the smoke builds up in the containment of the bowl and a little bit of convection occurs - then microwave on full power and if you've got it just right you'll get a lovely plasma storm inside the bowl...

YMMV

And of course there's the classic - calculating the speed of light using a microwave and cheese slices...

Chaky wrote:

Microwave can't heat up propane. It heats only the moisture. Then again, you don't need to heat up the propane for it is quite combustible at room temperature.

Im thinking the metal might spark the propane and boom!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

And of course there's the classic - calculating the speed of light using a microwave and cheese slices...

Can you please explain?

How fast the cheese melts probably...

I think he ment microwave, cheese slices and lighter...