this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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The eyes generally just explode. /jk No, they don't get hot because they don't contain any moisture.
I should put a caveat in here: if your stuffed animal says to remove the bag and microwave it separately, remove the bag and microwave it separately. Also, don't put a stuffed animal in the air fryer.
Just to add on a clarifying detail: microwaves can heat things that aren't water, they just usually don't do so nearly as well. So while this sloth might have eyes that don't get hot, a different one might have them cheerfully get insanely hot very fast.
So do my plates contain moisture? How can a bowl be ridiculously hot to handle while the contents inside range from warm to ice cold?
There's a whooopoooole lot of factors that can be involved, and it can be a combination of all of them.
Background: microwaves don't just heat water, they heat things with molecules that, like water, have a lopsided electric charge. When the microwave energy comes in contact with something, it either goes through it without interacting, bounces off of it, or is absorbed. Light with a window, a mirror and black paint is the same.
Lopsided molecules absorb the microwave and wiggle, and wiggly molecules are what we perceive as hot.
Microwave safe items are transparent to the microwave energy, and it goes through to the food.
Depending on the material your plate or bowl is made of, it might not be properly microwave safe. Some ceramics have the lopsided molecules microwaves like, so they get hot.
The bowl might also be made of a material that transfers heat really well. Think about how air from a hot oven is tolerable to have hit your face but significantly colder water is lethal.
It's in continuous contact with something that's getting up to boiling, the steam on the food, and so it gets hot quickly and transfers the heat to your hand easily. Since water can absorb a ton of energy before turning to steam, the energy is there for a while and there's plenty to heat the bowl.
Finally, microwaves have hotspots, even with the rotating tray. This can work with either of the previous two things to allow the food to stay cold while pumping a lot of energy into the bowl or one spot in the food. It's why a lot of reheat functions run the microwave and then sit for a few minutes:it lets the heat from the hotspots even out.
The trick is to cover the eyes and entire head with aluminum foil, then soak the animal in kerosine before making your child watch you microwave it.
Ah, I was thinking you'd want it to ignite in the child's hands to really maximize the lifelong trauma and deep seated trust issues.
This is a much better plan, but how do you ensure the delayed ignition? Some kind of det cord? Or a chemical catalyst?
Yes, fair enough. I think the ones which are designed to go in on the microwave are designed so the eyes don't get hot though!
Oh 100% they are. It would probably be harder to design them so they did get hot than otherwise, since I think the most suitable resin for eyes and buttons doesn't get hot. But it'd be a shame if someone got burned. :)
The microwave energy will absolutely heat the eyes, and everything else in there, regardless of moisture. The dielectric materials will heat quickly as they offer resistance to the RF.
You must be thinking of humans, as human eyes will generally heat quicker when a body is exposed to RF. The rest of the human body will heat as well, but the eyes may melt first, while electricity arcs between the fillings on their teeth.
There are a lot of assumptions here. The specific frequency of the microwave oven is tuned to be absorbed by water molecules.
Yes other materials, particularly metals, (shape and size matter too) can absorb the RF energy as well, but a lot do not, and the RF passes harmlessly through them.
Just like the massive amounts of RF that is going through you right now, every second of everyday. It is everywhere, but the wavelength is something that ignores almost everything you are made of.
There are assumptions for sure, as to the materials of the sloth, and how it interacts with the microwave energy. Will the eyes heat? Probably. Will they heat before the rest of the plushy erupts into flames? Not sure, but it'a testable, just not in my microwave.
There are many sections of the electromagnetic spectrum, but we are dealing with microwave energy in a microwave. Communication signals bouncing off the ionosphere and RF generated by car ignitions doesn't seem relevent to the discussion.
The RF, as electromagnetic energy, will induce current in metal objects that cut across the path of propagation. Yes, size, shape, material are important, which is why the plushie doesn't immediately catch fire.
If you allow microwave frequencies to cut across a human body with sufficient output power, you will heat that body and cook them with similar effects as food in a microwave.
If the instructions say to microwave the thing whole, then it was presumably tested in the manufacturer's microwave, though
I'm sure they did test it, I'm sure they did burn a few. But I don't want to see how long you'd have to nuke the thing in order to have it burst into flames or melt the eyes in my microwave. I'm gunna heat up some soup later. However, if you would like to stress test the plushie, I'd read your notes later.
That makes sense, I just remember a painful burn decades ago when hugging one that was in the back window of our car in a sunny parking lot.
That's a pretty different situation though.