Parents, romantic partners and roommates of America: I am not encouraging your child, partner or person you share living space with to do this. At least, not in your good microwave. They should buy their own for this sort of thing. And for the love of Pete, they should wear protective eye covering.
I am so very serious about the protective eye coverings.
(Thanks, Greg Laden!)
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There is something very cool about the phrase: "oh, plasma outbreak!"
I can already see it now...I'm going to have to buy a new microwave.
YAY! Science Saturdays :)
Some heavy gloves would probably be a good idea too. But yeah, I think I'm gonna have to do this.
This does transcend the loveliness of the grape-in-the-microwave trick, but I doubt that folks would let me do it at their house with their microwave oven.
I love it: "*touch* *touch* - yep, too hot to touch."
This might be part of the process for engineering a frog or mouse into a beer bottle. As a child, fond memories of making carmel by burning sugar in the toaster oven.
Bill claims to have been using the same microwave oven for like 10 years now. Oh, and yes, that is the microwave he cooks with, too. :-)
FYI, if you're in Seattle, Bill hosts the monthly Weird Science Salon, where you can often see him working on his latest unwise microwave experiment, or show off your own. For details see http://amasci.com/wsci/.
Plasma and wanton disregard for warranties, I love science saturdays!
Right-o, need to purchase an old microwave now. I'll add it to the old coffee grinder used for finely grinding the ingredients for home made black powder (advice straight from Absinthe and Flamethrowers).
A little explanation of the plasma thing is in order, and I second the comment about gloves, preferably not rubber ones. A face shield in addition to goggles would be smart, too.
I believe using an electric conductor would be safer for those who have blowtorch phobia. Like, maybe we could just throw a paper clip in and forget about the whole blowtorch thing.
Oh, and I can already forsee the new product: "Instant Plasma Kit". Contents would be a few pieces of glassware and a blowtorch. Microwave not included!
Cruel temptation. I live in an area where you can't get Fat Tire at all, and here this guy is apparently swimming in empties such that he has to microwave them for disposal.
--Patrick
Dude... get a wife.
I did this myself back in 2002... but on accident. Got in on the beta for Xbox Live, threw some dinner into the oven, and hit the timer on the microwave (except I turned on the microwave, not the timer). The whole thing caught fire because the dispersal belt had snapped, focusing all of the radiation onto the door itself for 20 minutes.
Pretty pictures and a writup I did at the time here.
In a side note, I had to update all of the image URLs, as they pointed to the old geocities address. :/
@MrScience : that picture of the microwave door? I just LOVE how it states "self cleaning oven". I'm sure this situation wasn't contemplated by the good people whomever manufactured it. ;D
The sound of the plasma in the beer bottle was fantastic! I'd love to get a high-resolution recording of that phenomenon!
Lovely writing. Chuckled.
For some reason I expected the title card at the end to say "In memory of Bill"
Glad I stood around until the end to hear what was actually going on. Never knew glass becomes a conductor at any temperature.
I had a chemistry teacher show us something similar to this in high school (burning match under a pyrex beaker to make plasma). Really really awesome, but he ended up leaving the microwave on too long and melted the pyrex beaker into the bottom of the microwave.
This same teacher was also pretty fond of different experiments involving increasingly large amounts of calcium and water and probably lit his desk on fire for fun at least four times a quarter. Needless to say, he was my favorite teacher.
Haha... I love the juxtaposition of intelligence with... well "creativity"
"It would be like a forest fire, there would be an outbreak of conductivity and it would start absorbing microwave energy like mad"
> new microwave
Buy a old/working one at a garage sale. Nobody wants 'em, so they go very cheap. At one point I had a stack of them in my garage, each for $5.
Plasma! It's just an electric spark (and empty uW ovens are high voltage environments.) Also called "electrodeless discharge" or "microwave ball lightning." It needs an ion source to get started. Carbon from charred material works well. Try a sharp carbon object, such as a charred toothpick or broken pencil lead stood on end somehow.
The blow torch makes an intentionally steep curve to prevent little kids from trying this demo. ...but there are ways to trigger glass melting without a torch.
how? i want to completely melt pyrex in a microwave. i have a torch and a kiln to preheat and anneal. how do make pyrex conductive without a torch?
WARNING! Red-hot glass emits infrared light, and regular safety glasses are not sufficient if you plan to noodle around with glass in the microwave for extended periods.
I highly recommend that anyone wanting to try this experiment first get some safety glasses from a hobby shop that sells glassworking equipment (like bead making kits, etc).
1: Before anyone melts pyrex in their microwave they need to know this: When the lump of pyrex cools (or even while you're pre-heating it) there's a good chance that, due to the strength of Pyrex vs. large temp differences across small areas, that it will explode with a great deal of force. Much worse than what happened to the beer bottle. We're talking grievous injuries here (maybe even death depending on amount of glass and other factors). Closing the microwave door may not matter with Pyrex. Goggles are good, but a blast shield or something would be better.
A friend of mine was hospitalized when a square pyrex pan of some kind of casserole exploded in his oven as he opened the door. It cut and punctured the skin around his chest, stomach, neck and one arm and he could have died quickly from blood loss had there not been someone to rush him to the emergency room. We heard the "BANG!" from inside a car with the windows up and parked on the street out front. Yet, at first, we both thought that it was a decent sized firecracker (being the 4th of july).
so heads up.