Auroras, lightning, and welding arcs are also plasmas; plasmas exist in neon and fluorescent tubes, in the crystal structure of metallic solids, and in many other phenomena and objects. The Earth itself is immersed in a tenuous plasma called the solar wind and is surrounded by a dense plasma called the ionosphere.

Plasma Basics Plasmas are a lot like gases, but the atoms are different, because they are made up of free electrons and ions of an element such as neon (Ne). You don’t find naturally occurring plasmas too often when you walk around. They aren’t things that happen regularly on Earth.

The charged particles in the belts are trapped in the mirror system formed by the Earth’s magnetic dipole field. Plasma can exist briefly in the lowest regions of the Earth’s atmosphere.

106eV

The ITER plasma will be ten times hotter than the centre of the Sun. For a physicist, temperature is not only an indication of “cold” or “hot”; it also describes the energy of the particles that make up an object or a particular environment such as a plasma. …

It was found that without any optimization to the plasma, the gas in the plasma center can reach temperatures of up to 5,000 K.

However, there’s a hitch: this plasma can damage the microwave, and running it empty (or in this case, nearly empty) isn’t a good idea in general, as the unabsorbed radiation can damage it as well.

Never heat flammable or combustible liquids in the microwave – a fire or explosion may occur. Be extremely careful when removing heated liquids and food from the microwave, the container may only feel warm but the contents are extremely hot.

If another grape half is nearby, the trapped microwaves can hop between them, generating a strong electromagnetic field. That provides the energy for the electrons and ions to escape from the molecules inside the grapes and the air, producing a plasma.

Though the microwave method is much speedier than the oven method, you probably don’t want to use it if your bananas are still quite green. Because the microwave is so quick to soften the fruit, the natural sugars within do not develop and sweeten as they do with the oven method of speed-ripening.

If you put grapes in the microwave you don’t get raisins. You’ll get fire. Grapes are mostly water, so you’d think they would be okay. However, the roughly spherical shape of the grapes, combined with their waxy peel causes the microwaves to generate plasma.

When microwaved as one whole, a grape traps the microwaves in its center. When split in two and placed near each other, the trapped microwaves can hop from grape half to grape half, forming an electromagnetic field that ionizes the grape’s sodium and potassium ions. Then, fire!

Here’s a perennial favorite: Cleave a grape in half, leaving a little skin connecting the two hemispheres. Blitz it in the microwave for five seconds. For one glorious moment, the grape halves will produce a fireball unfit for domestic life.

They found that grapes—either one split in half or two touching—are able to concentrate the energy of the microwave into two “hotspots.” When the hotspots touch, they create a plasma, or an ionized gas which emits light and heat. The size of the grapes, it turns out, are the key to this kitchen science quirk.

Apparently, if you microwave grapes, they’ll catch fire! According to physicists, when two grapes are close to one another in a microwave, the waves they absorb bounce back and forth in the close quarters between them, creating an increasingly powerful electromagnetic field.

Heat the fruit in a microwave for a few seconds. Then, boom! From the grape erupts a small fireball of electrons and electrically charged atoms called ions. The hot mix of electrons and ions is known as a plasma.

Sparking indicates that something conductive is just the right size and shape to act as an antenna, converting the microwaves into electrical energy, thus creating the spark. Chocolate absorbs microwaves, but is not conductive enough to carry electricity thus cannot be the source of the sparking.

Melting chocolate in the microwave isn’t totally without perils. As the heat from a microwave can be fairly fierce and starts from within, you must make sure that you pause cooking every 20 to 30 seconds to give it a stir – otherwise your chocolate could burn, and burnt chocolate has a terrible flavour.

Is a Sparking Microwave Dangerous? In most cases, you’re perfectly safe if your microwave starts sparking. However, if you see sparks in the microwave, you should still turn it off immediately.

Arcing (pronounced “AR-king”) is sparks inside the microwave oven caused when microwaves react to gold paint on dishes, twist ties and other metallic materials. Some foods such as raw carrots and hot dogs can cause arcing while being microwaved. In hot dogs, this can be due to the uneven mixing of salts and additives.

Margarine or butter. Its molecules are crystallized and resistant to microwave rays. “If you apply a longer cooking time to make the butter melt, you strip its protein value with the heat,” says Cosentino.

Although heat is able to escape from the outside of the microwaved food, it usually gets trapped internally, cooking the food faster on the inside. Without a way for the steam to escape, the internal pressure rapidly builds until the food explodes.

Putting the curd in a microwave oven causes the proteins to re-form and get tough again. That protein starts to break apart because of an enzyme used in cheese making. When that happens, no matter what you do, the proteins will never re-form.

To put it simply, the protein network found in cheese curds is woven tightly, allowing it to “rebound” from our teeth as we bite, creating a squeak.

Foods You Should Never Put In The Microwave

• Eggs in shells. Shutterstock.
• Chili peppers. Shutterstock.
• Breast milk. Shutterstock.
• A mug of water. Shutterstock.
• Processed meats. Shutterstock.
• Leafy greens. Shutterstock.
• Oils. Shutterstock.
• Uncooked rice. Shutterstock.

Only microwaving for five minutes had a detrimental effect on the antioxidant capacity of the blueberries. “What we can say from this study is that cooking and heating, especially longer microwaving, does decrease the amount of beneficial compounds in the berries,” Grusak said.

They cook but quite possibly they’ll also explode, splattering the inside of the microwave. To avoid this, use a microwave-safe glass container with a lid and vent hole. The weight of the glass should contain the blueberries.

Microwaving destroys the beneficial compounds in fruits and vegetables, so eating them has no benefit to you.