Microwave Cooking Hot and Cold Spots – Why?
You place your dinner of leftovers in a bowl in the microwave oven, loosely cover it, shut the door and set the timer for 6 minutes. You picked that time from experience. When the timer beeps, you pick up the plate with your oven mitt and set it on the table. Then you gingerly remove the covering to avoid a steam burn. You salt and pepper your food, let it set two minutes or so, and begin eating. You taste the first mouthful and it is perfect. However, the second mouthful much hotter! Stirring the food half-way through the cooking process would have helped prevent this. Why the Hot Spots? The oven is a microwave oven. The heat results from absorbed invisible waves, specifically microwave standing waves, produced by a…