There are products such as microwave ovens that can quickly heat food. What I am asking is why are there no products that is opposite of microwave ovens as everyday product?
In: Physics
To warm something, you add energy to it. To cool something, you need to take energy away from it.
Adding energy is pretty simple. Heat something up with a gas or electricity, or in the case of a microwave, apply electrical energy to produce microwaves to excite water molecules.
There’s no equivalent process to take energy away to a microwave – you can’t use waves to slow down the vibrations of water molecules. There are things such as blast chillers that can be used to “quickly” cool down food items, but their culinary uses are relatively limited. I mean, we’ve all wished we could quickly cool down a beverage that’s at room temperature, but are you willing to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on something that might cool things down 5 times faster than a freezer? Plus, given that it’s that much colder (~-40C) than a normal freezer, you have a very short window of opportunity between “cold enough” and “frozen”, further limiting the utility in 95% of cases someone would want to quickly cool something at home.
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