1. Are microwave ovens tuned to the resonant frequency of the water molecule? (R
ID: 1441007 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Are microwave ovens tuned to the resonant frequency of the water molecule? (Resonant frequencies are those which cause the valence electrons in a molecule to jump into a higher energy state.)
2. From what secret World War II project did the microwave oven come?
3. Whose theory did Lemaitre's mathematical derivation and Hubble's data prove to be wrong? (Actually, the theory was just fine, it was an addition to the theory with which Lemaitre took issue. In the last few years, the thinking has once again flipped! Stay tuned.)
Where in your own home can you see the CMB?
Explanation / Answer
1. The microwaves in a microwave oven are not tuned to a resonant frequency of water. In fact, the microwaves generated inside a microwave oven are not really tuned to any particular resonant frequency since the waves are broadband. A broadband electromagnetic wave contains many frequencies. You need a monochromatic wave (a nearly single-frequency wave) in order to tune to a specific frequency. Microwaves in an microwave oven are not monochromatic.
The microwaves in a microwave oven are created by a device called a magnetron, which is a resonant cavity that causes current to naturally oscillate at high frequency, and thereby emit electromagnetic waves. The oscillation of the current in the magnetron is not caused by a delicately-controlled external circuit. Rather, the oscillation arises naturally from the way that electrons emitted by the cathode hit the anode in a random fashion and then slosh around as directed by the magnetron's shape. This randomness causes the magnetron to emit many frequencies. Furthermore, the random nature of the oscillation generation also causes the frequencies to be unstable and quickly jump around.
2. The microwave oven was invented as an accidental by-product of war-time (World War 2) radar research using magnetrons (vacuum tubes that produce microwave radiation, a type of electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength between 1 mm and 30 cm). In 1946, the engineer Dr. Percy LeBaron Spencer, who worked for the Raytheon Corporation, was working on magnetrons. One day at work, he had a candy bar in his pocket, and found that it had melted. He realized that the microwaves he was working with had caused it to melt. After experimenting, he realized that microwaves would cook foods quickly - even faster than conventional ovens that cook with heat.
3. The Big Bang Theory
CMB stands for Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is a remnant of the hot, dense phase of the universe that followed the Big Bang. If you were to travel really fast in one direction, you could see a tiny speck of the CMB blue shifted into the visible but since the CMB has a temperature that is about 1000 times lower than that of visible light, you would have to go very close to the speed of light.
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