For example: a playe containing rice and a side, the rice comes out much hotter than the side despite getting microwaved at the same time
In: Physics
Microwaves work best by heating up water molecules. If a food has more water in it, then it will usually heat up better.
Microwaves also can’t penetrate into all foods as well as others. The better the microwaves (the things the electronic appliance is named after) can get into the food (so usually the less dense it is) the better the food will heat up.
Microwaves are just light, and materials absorb that frequency of light better will heat up faster, the same way a blue object will heat up more than a red object when exposed to red light. The rice in your example absorbs microwaves very well. Ideally the food is translucent to the microwaves, so it can heat the inside of the food at the same time as the outside, instead of just heating from the outside in.
There’s also the issue that some parts of the microwave get more heat than others, while the turntable helps with this, it isn’t perfect. The center of the turntable in particular doesn’t move much, so if there’s a hot or cold spot there you need to move the plate on the turntable partway through heating.
Micro waves are very good at heating up liquid water, they are fairly bad at heating up ice or fats. Microwaves use something called dielectric heating, more complicated science stuff follows. Dielectric heating is when the polarity of a molecule aligns itself in an electromagnetic field and as that undergoes changes like with a microwave oven the molecule rapidly moves heating up in the process. Communication devices can also use microwaves and potentially can also cause dielectric heating. https://youtu.be/V0dtq3rCEjw
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