A piece of molten chocolate led to the invention of microwave!
In today’s fast-paced life, microwave oven has become our indispensable kitchen companion. In fact, it’s tough to imagine a life without it. The dull halogen lighting, the rotating glass plate and the beeping sound—we are all too familiar with these aspects of a microwave oven. But did you know that this all-too-essential equipment was invented accidentally by an American engineer named Percy Lebaron Spencer? Read on to know how microwave oven came into being.
The molten chocolate and the microwave
As you might be already aware, right from the world’s first stethoscope to the first vaccination, many things that are intrinsic parts of our daily lives, were accidental inventions. So is the case with microwave.
One fine day, when Spencer, a leading expert in radar technology, was working with magnetron, a tube that generates short wavelength microwaves, noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted! Spencer was not the first to observe this, but he was the first one who went on to explore it further.
So, Spencer started to experiment with foods like popcorn kernels, which resulted in the creation of the world's first microwaved popcorn. Another experiment involved placing an egg in a tea kettle and placing the magnetron right above it. Want to know what happened next? Well, the egg exploded. From these experiments, Spencer realised that the foods (popcorn, eggs, chocolate, etc.) had been exposed to low-density microwave energy.
One thing led to another and Spencer constructed a metal box by attaching a high-density electromagnetic field generator to it. What happened as a result was that the energy entered the box but was unable to escape. Why? This was because microwaves could not flow through metal. In turn, this enabled safe and controlled experimentation with different food items while observing their varying temperatures and effects.
After a series of experiments, Spencer concluded that microwaves cooked food faster than traditional ovens that used heat. In 1945, he applied for a patent on the microwave oven and in 1947, we got the first commercially produced microwave oven called Radarange. It was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 340 kgs. The cost was a whopping US$5,000!
How do microwaves work?
Well, that’s an interesting one. Microwave ovens make use of use radio waves set at a specific frequency — 2,450 megahertz. The power ranges from 500 to 1,100 watts. The food inside a microwave oven is covered on all sides by the microwaves while the water molecules within it absorb the microwaves. So, what do the resulting vibrations do? They generate heat and cook the food. Microwaves are capable of passing through plastic, glass and ceramic but not metals.