Is your family unable to learn anything outside of college? Or do you just have no common sense?
SagaLore
Elite Member
- Dec 18, 2001
- 24,036
- 21
- 81
Actually your mom is right, and you are wrong. If it were completely shielded, you wouldn't be able to see into it.
That being said, cell phones also emit em radiation. Ask your mom if she keeps the phone more than 2 feet away from her while she's having a discussion with the person on the other end.
No, but I did have a co-worker, years ago, that should've been told how microwave ovens work.
He had one of those $5 K-mart digital watches, with the plastic band & case, and it got wet enough one day while he was working, that the watch stopped working.
Everyone told him, "give it a day or two to dry out, and it'll probably start working again".
He thinks to himself that he doesn't want to wait a day or two (the impatience of youth strikes again), and remembers someone told him that a microwave oven works by heating the water molecules in food. He knows that putting metal in a microwave is not a good idea, but hey, HIS WATCH IS PLASTIC, RIGHT??? :shocked:
Yep, he did it. Stuck that watch in the microwave, and turned it on. Said it took about 5 seconds, then all of a sudden he saw, through the door window, a "lightning bolt" go from the top of the microwave, down to the watch......which effectively killed the microwave AND the watch!! Put a nice 1/4" hole in the microwave oven, totally fried the watch.
When someone incredulously asked him WTF he was thinking, putting that watch in the microwave, his answer was, "I thought it was safe, since the watch was made out of plastic!"
We then taught him about printed circuit boards inside digital watches. :roll:
He had one of those $5 K-mart digital watches, with the plastic band & case, and it got wet enough one day while he was working, that the watch stopped working.
Everyone told him, "give it a day or two to dry out, and it'll probably start working again".
He thinks to himself that he doesn't want to wait a day or two (the impatience of youth strikes again), and remembers someone told him that a microwave oven works by heating the water molecules in food. He knows that putting metal in a microwave is not a good idea, but hey, HIS WATCH IS PLASTIC, RIGHT??? :shocked:
Yep, he did it. Stuck that watch in the microwave, and turned it on. Said it took about 5 seconds, then all of a sudden he saw, through the door window, a "lightning bolt" go from the top of the microwave, down to the watch......which effectively killed the microwave AND the watch!! Put a nice 1/4" hole in the microwave oven, totally fried the watch.
When someone incredulously asked him WTF he was thinking, putting that watch in the microwave, his answer was, "I thought it was safe, since the watch was made out of plastic!"
We then taught him about printed circuit boards inside digital watches. :roll:
Yep. All the time. Physicists say the shell blocks the stuff. Other people say stay away, it'll 'radiate' you, and they go crazy if you open the door before the beeping stops.
Recently, I've been more worried about the EM they throw out than them crazy microwaves.
Recently, I've been more worried about the EM they throw out than them crazy microwaves.
Born2bwire
Diamond Member
- Oct 28, 2005
- 9,840
- 6
- 71
I'm not all that caught up on microwaves and leaking, but isn't that grill/mesh screen suppose to be just small enough to stop the waves from getting through?
Bill Brasky
Diamond Member
- May 18, 2006
- 4,324
- 1
- 0
- Nov 30, 2005
- 50,231
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Yep. When I was little my Uncle said to me "don't stand in front of that thing, it will make you impotent". I was pretty young, so I asked "what's impotent?" and he said "your penis will fall off". I never stood directly in front of a microwave again.
KT
KT
Born2bwire
Diamond Member
- Oct 28, 2005
- 9,840
- 6
- 71
They still let power through, it's just that instead of allowing a supported wave mode it's an evanescent mode. But the screen is very thin and so a modicum of power will be leaked through. Designers can calculate this, in addition to the other sources of leakage, and design the hole size and screen thickness such that the leaked power conforms to accepted standards.
lol someone should market a jock strap that shields you from radiation/impotence :light: so you don't "bake" your nads
I have enough faith in Faraday not to be afraid of the microwave oven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 19
- 81
I think that has to do with the electromagnetic field generated by the transformer that steps up the voltage for the magnetron. I think if you had enough microwave radiation leaking out to seriously degrade wireless signals, you'd have other problems.
I have seen this effect, too. Sometimes back on campus I'd watch recorded TV shows on my laptop, sent over the wireless network. They were MPEG2 files, and were just barely within the limit of my wireless network. If the microwave was turned on, I started to get skipping and dropped frames.
I could do the same thing at home with my Tesla Coil. That thing even caused video artifacts in a nearby webcam that was attached to a laptop running on battery power. You'll get some UV off of the arcs, but I don't think it puts out anything in the microwave range. But there's also a huge, pulsating EM field coming off of the primary coil, as well as off of the secondary terminal. That's where the interference comes from.
It's shielded against the wavelengths that matter. Frequencies in the visible spectrum get through. Microwaves don't.
If your retinas were only sensitive to microwave frequencies around those used by microwave ovens, and someone held up a mesh screen like a microwave uses, you'd say it was opaque.
And not only cellphones emit EM radiation, or rather, EM fields. A regular telephone's speaker in the handset has a coil of wire in it, and so it will also produce a low-level EM field when it generates sound.
LOL I forgot that people care about the door opening before the beeping stops. Silly people
There is something to be said about leaving your food to sit before eating it, though; since all microwaves have dead spots (interference pattern = minima = spots that don't get heated by the microwave). The heat travels well through conduction, but it might be good to let your food sit for a minute (or stir halfway through I guess).
- Nov 28, 2001
- 22,205
- 43
- 91
The opening of the door before the beeping stops has a little more weight behind it as being possibly dangerous than simply standing next to a working microwave. As long as the door is closed it's essentially a physical impossibility for the microwave to leak, unless the front shielding is gone or something but you'd notice that. Opening the door on the other hand relies on a switch turning off the microwave as it senses the door opening. Microwaves are of course designed to be operated this way. It's possible though not very likely that such a switch could break and the microwave would keep running with an open door.
At least that's my understanding.
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