Ants + Microwave=

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eebowler

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Nothing! That's right, nothing at all. I am talking about the very small ants that are about a mm or two in length. If they happen to end up in some food left on the counter and you put the food to microwave for 3minutes, when you open the microwave to take out the hot food, the ants will still be alive happily crawling about on the glass platter as if nothing happened.

WHY? Don't they contain water and fat inside of them? Why don't they heat up and explode like an egg? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif
 

Jack_Crow

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ee,
My guess has to do with the amount of water in them. Also the wave leingth is much longer than the bug is. No internal resonence.

Just my guess.

Lots of bugs in Iraq. Amused my self watching a bug zapper last night infront of an MP HQ.

For what it's worth, want to bet they explode if you put them across enough high voltage?

Hope all is well.

Jack Crow in Iraq
 

Draco_Americanus

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Fly's live a very long time in a microwave oven as well, they seem to find dead spots in the microwave field and then stay there.
Now take steal wool or old compact discs, now those are fun to place into the microwave.
 

Shanghaied

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Yeah I saw it on discovery channel about something like that too, again they claim the main reason was their small size.
 

eebowler

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Draco, you will love this site. Don't try them at home!

I was thinking about size as well. However, I couldn't figure what part it played since the microwaves heats up the water (and other) molecules and not the insect itself. Size shouldn't matter (ladies /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif) if you are talking about the water alone as being a factor. Unless, in order for an object or insect to be affected by the microwaves, it must be related mathematically to the actual size (wavelength) of the micrwaves doing the heating??
 

Shanghaied

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I thought the discovery people said something about the size of their body being so small that most of the microwave actually miss their body.

From what little I know, it sounds very anti-intuitive (or was it counter-intuitive?), so someone please explain.
 

cobb

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About high voltage and bugs. I saw a invention on invent this on g4tv where a guy wrapped stuff with 2 lines of copper around the bottom most part, like a dish for the dog or a blanket. They used a 9 volt battery to energized the 2 bands. When ants crossed both parts, zap.
 

mattheww50

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two points.
First the microwaves don't really directly excite the water molecules very well . They are largely excited by the I^R heating that is created by the field. Unless you go to exceptional effort, water is actually a pretty good conductor (truly pure distilled water is a lousy conductor, and in fact one of the test for water purity is a conductivity measurement!).

The Microwaves produce a very strong a moving magnetic field, and as such induce voltages, and more importantly, currents in the material. The material is actually heated by I^2 R heating from these induced voltages (and current)

For very small objects, it is hard to produce fields that induce sufficent voltage to produce much heating. For example at 1000/V per meter,
something like a hamburger with a diameter of 8Cm is going to see about 80 volts induced, so you can generate significant I^2 R heating. An ant that is perhaps 1 or 2mm long is only going to see an induced voltage of 1-2 volts, so unless the ants insides are exceptionally good conductors, you cannot produce much heating.

The other issue is that by definition, the field must go to zero at the edges of the box that is the microwave open proper. There are two reason for the turntable. First it gets you up off the bottom of the box, to a place where the field does not have to be zero, and second, it rotates the material through the field continuously, so that while there may be significant high and low field areas within the oven container, what you are cooking is rotated through all of it, so the field the foods sees is averaged out.

Now if you were to put a full grown praying mantis, or grasshopper in the microwave and turn it, they really would cook. They are large enough that the induced voltages from the field would produce the heating, and they are large enough that they will cannot be flush with the walls of the oven.
 

PhotonWrangler

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Place a chocolate bar or a fudgesicle in the microwave and run it for maybe 5-10 seconds on high. If you get the timing just right you'll see the pattern of the standing waves impressed into the food.
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Please don't put living things in the oven though. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif
 

The_LED_Museum

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I heard of somebody putting a live mouse in a microwave back in the early 1990s; needless to say, the mouse wasn't "live" for very long. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
 

naromtap

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[ QUOTE ]
The_LED_Museum said:
I heard of somebody putting a live mouse in a microwave back in the early 1990s; needless to say, the mouse wasn't "live" for very long. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I don't doubt it - I just slung a cat in mine & the dam thing just burst into flames!!
P1010027.jpg
 

eebowler

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/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hahaha.gif naromtap You're not serious right? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

mattheww50 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif. That's alot to swallow. I found another site which does mention electric field effects on the water molecules. The heating effect however, is due to friction between other molecules. I am in no way doubting what you said is true, it is just that I am trying to understand it as best as possible by finding other info.

What is 'I^R heating' and 'I^2 R heating'?

Does your post mean that for eg, 1g of water standing alone, will be heated less than any 1g section of a 50g sample of water in the same microwave at the same setting since the 50g sample is of a larger mass?

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif I wonder if roaches are big enough to go *POP*? Not that I would try that...
 

KevinL

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[ QUOTE ]
eebowler said:
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif I wonder if roaches are big enough to go *POP*? Not that I would try that...

[/ QUOTE ]

Only because the damned things would stink up the microwave so bad - it's already bad enough when you take a flyswat to one... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon6.gif
 

cobb

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Remember, never pet a burning car. I had a friend who was psyco who did that. He said he found a microwave out by the corner for trash and took it to his house and plugged it in outside. SOme how he found a cat and put in inside. He said it just froze, meowed and kind of exploded. Now that I think of it, there was a women here in the city of richmond who put her baby in the nuker. Man, people now days.
 
E

EchoSierraTwo

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[ QUOTE ]
Jack_Crow said:
ee,
My guess has to do with the amount of water in them. Also the wave leingth is much longer than the bug is. No internal resonence.

Just my guess.

Lots of bugs in Iraq. Amused my self watching a bug zapper last night infront of an MP HQ.

For what it's worth, want to bet they explode if you put them across enough high voltage?

Hope all is well.

Jack Crow in Iraq

[/ QUOTE ]you at the CSC?
 
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