Ugh.
So I'm sitting here workin on a lab, and I hear her running the microwave. Since she is making split pea soup I don't think anything of it. I go out there a few minutes later and ask her what she is microwaving:
"Oh, nothing, I just needed a timer for two minutes."
I give her a nice, blank stare.
What are the odds the microwave will ever work again? I know that running it without a load is akin to running a short -circuit. Will her microwave still work or is it effectively toasted? The microwave is late 80s, early 90s, judging from the design - it came embedded into her stovetop on the kitchen.
UPDATE:
From: http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW//microwave_ovens.html
This goes to show that the general consensus is not always the right one.
"Why are you required to have an item in the microwave oven while it is operating?
When a microwave oven is cooking food, electrons move rhythmically back and forth inside the magnetron tube and create the microwaves. These microwaves flow through a metal pipe and into the cooking chamber, where they are absorbed by the water in the food and thus heat the food (the twisting back and forth of the water molecules, described elsewhere on this page, not only heats the food--it also absorbs the microwaves). If there is no food in the cooking chamber, the microwaves build up in the cooking chamber until they are so intense that large numbers of them flow backward through the pipe to the magnetron. These microwaves reenter the magnetron and disrupt the motion of electrons inside it. The magnetron begins to misbehave and can be damaged as a result. To avoid such damage, you want to be sure that there is something in the cooking chamber to absorb the microwaves before they return to the magnetron and cause trouble. In short, don't run the microwave empty for any long periods of time."
And I specifically KNEW this was a bad thing because at the end of the 80s, when I was like 3, I broke a microwave oven by doing this for five minutes. I was four years old and still remember how mad my parents were, because they weren't $60 pieces of equipment you could find at Best Buy at the time.
EDIT2 : Why do I call it a load?
We've discussed this problem in my second circuits class. A microwave oven is a linear circuit and can be modeled, somewhat simplistically, as a thevenin equivalent circuit which consists of a voltage source, and a resistor in series.
you can simplistically model a microwave oven by this. Any food you put into it can be modeled as a resistive load. If you run it without nothing in it, it is like creating a short between the terminals of the thevenin equivalent circuit.
Hence the name load.
So I'm sitting here workin on a lab, and I hear her running the microwave. Since she is making split pea soup I don't think anything of it. I go out there a few minutes later and ask her what she is microwaving:
"Oh, nothing, I just needed a timer for two minutes."
I give her a nice, blank stare.
What are the odds the microwave will ever work again? I know that running it without a load is akin to running a short -circuit. Will her microwave still work or is it effectively toasted? The microwave is late 80s, early 90s, judging from the design - it came embedded into her stovetop on the kitchen.
UPDATE:
From: http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW//microwave_ovens.html
This goes to show that the general consensus is not always the right one.
"Why are you required to have an item in the microwave oven while it is operating?
When a microwave oven is cooking food, electrons move rhythmically back and forth inside the magnetron tube and create the microwaves. These microwaves flow through a metal pipe and into the cooking chamber, where they are absorbed by the water in the food and thus heat the food (the twisting back and forth of the water molecules, described elsewhere on this page, not only heats the food--it also absorbs the microwaves). If there is no food in the cooking chamber, the microwaves build up in the cooking chamber until they are so intense that large numbers of them flow backward through the pipe to the magnetron. These microwaves reenter the magnetron and disrupt the motion of electrons inside it. The magnetron begins to misbehave and can be damaged as a result. To avoid such damage, you want to be sure that there is something in the cooking chamber to absorb the microwaves before they return to the magnetron and cause trouble. In short, don't run the microwave empty for any long periods of time."
And I specifically KNEW this was a bad thing because at the end of the 80s, when I was like 3, I broke a microwave oven by doing this for five minutes. I was four years old and still remember how mad my parents were, because they weren't $60 pieces of equipment you could find at Best Buy at the time.
EDIT2 : Why do I call it a load?
We've discussed this problem in my second circuits class. A microwave oven is a linear circuit and can be modeled, somewhat simplistically, as a thevenin equivalent circuit which consists of a voltage source, and a resistor in series.
you can simplistically model a microwave oven by this. Any food you put into it can be modeled as a resistive load. If you run it without nothing in it, it is like creating a short between the terminals of the thevenin equivalent circuit.
Hence the name load.
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