Recently my wife expressed concerns that our microwave is unsafe and I’m too ignorant to know why she is wrong. Please explain why microwaves are safe to use.
In: Technology
The metal grill at the front of the microwave has holes for a reason: So you can look in and see your food getting blasted, but you can’t be blasted, because the microwaves literally cannot squeeze through the tiny holes, but light (which is also a wave) is much smaller, so can easily pass through the mesh.
A good example of this in action is when you pour concrete. If you have a mesh set up and pour concrete in, it won’t go through the mesh because even though the concrete is liquid(-ish), it’s still too thick to go through. Even if the mesh is quite large, it’ll still contain most or all of the concrete. Check out Colin Furze’s video here, where he pours concrete into his secret tunnel with a very coarse grill in the way: [https://youtu.be/-IjKRK-ORSs?t=829](https://youtu.be/-IjKRK-ORSs?t=829) . There is some leakage, but not a whole lot of it. So just imagine that the energy heating your leftovers are concrete, and the mesh is stopping the concrete from getting out.
As for the nutrition content, that’s not true. Microwaves are tuned to excite water molecules into vibrating, so it’s heating up the water inside the food and not much else.
Microwaves deliver heat in the form of electromagnetic waves. The box that forms the microwave while in operation will contain the waves. There are safety interlocks to prevent the microwave from operating if the door isn’t closed.
Yes, the wave is a form of radiation — but the radiation turns off when the microwave is not running.
The radiation cooks the food, like a flame on a stove cooks the food. As long as you don’t go out of your way to put your body in the radiation (like you wouldn’t stick your hand in a flame), you’re fine. The radiation from a microwave is non-ionizing radiation, which is safe (as long as you don’t expose yourself to so much of it that you get burned).
Emitting non-ionizing radiation when the device is turned on is quite different from an item being radioactive. Actual radioactive material will constantly emit ionizing radiation – and that’s where the danger is. No such things are used in microwaves.
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