Microwave Heating: The Science Behind It

Chase Roosdett
PHYS 211 Web Project Fall 2004

The microwave oven, a tool that we use often in our busy lives to heat up foods when we just don't have the time or patience for a conventional oven to do its work.

How does this device work?

It's pretty simple if we use the basics of physics to explain it. Vibrations from the high frequency radio waves cause the water and fat cells in food to generate heat through friction of the molecules.

An example of this using a turkey shows the molecules positive and negative particles acting through these vibrations to cause friction.
	J. Carlton Gallawa -- http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/howcook.html