Re: microwave, RF heating

[Chuck Britton <cvbritton@TELOCITY.COM>]

We had a MicroWave/IR spectroscopist PhD working for us as a
long-term sub, a coupla years back.
He INSISTED that MicroWave heating is ENTIRELY a conductivity effect
and that there are NO significant resonances anywhere near the 2.4
GHz household MicroWave frequency.

After subbing for us (as a favor) he went back to his consulting
business and pulling in Federal $$$ on air emissions research.

Wax paper (paraffin) has lots of OH groups but is NOT heated!?


At 2:50 AM -0700 5/29/00, Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese wrote:


> I don't think conductivity has anything to do with microwave
> absorption*.  Water is a
> rather good insulator -- Try heating a pair of glasses, one with
> brine, the other
> deionized water.  I'll be surprised if the temps are more different
> than expected due to
> variations in the microwave field with position -- you have a
> "carousel" oven?  Both water
> and fats, fatty acids, glycerides, etc. have O-H bonds whose
> stretching frequency is close
> to that of the oven's magnetron.  Amino acids, and, therefore,
> proteins, also have OH
> bonds (in the carboxylic group), so they heat up too.  I would
> expect the heating to be
> some monotonically increasing function of the density of OH bonds.
> I'll ask my
> nutritionist friend about the comparative densities in egg yolk and white.
>
> bc

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Chuck Britton                                   Education is what is left when
britton@academic.ncssm.edu                      you have forgotten everything
North Carolina School of Science & Math         you learned in school.
(919) 286-3366  x224                            Albert Einstein,        1936