On Mon, 31 Dec 2018 07:18:47 -0000, Diesel wrote:

"William Gothberg"
news GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:46:36 -0000, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:15:05 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

On 29/12/2018 16:27, William Gothberg wrote:

It can take 5 minutes to warm something from frozen to eating
temperature. I see no reason that couldn't be made into 2
minutes.

Conduction

Bill
Cooking a steak in 2 minutes would likely be like cooking an
egg in
it's shell in a microwave. Zapp!! - Splatt!!!!!!

even boiling a tall cup of water at 1000 watts can be dangerous


Boiling of water occurs when bubbles of water vapor expand in
liquid water and are released at its surface. When water is
heated in a microwave, it may remain undisturbed during the
heating process so that there are no nucleation sites around
which bubbles may form. The superheated water may appear to be
cooler than it really is since the water did not visibly boil.
Bumping a cup of superheated water, adding another ingredient
(e.g., salt or sugar), or stirring the water may cause it to
boil, suddenly and violently. The water may boil over the cup or
spray out as steam.

To prevent this from happening, avoid reboiling water. Boiling
drives dissolved gases out of water, so when you allow it to cool
before boiling it again, there are fewer nucleation sites to
allow boiling at the boiling point. Also, if you suspect water is
hot enough that it should have boiled, move the container with a
long-handled spoon so if explosively boiling occurs, you're less
likely to get burned. Finally, avoid heating water longer than
necessary.

That's a myth. I've seen those silly posters in the workplace -
never boil water on its own, don't take it out as soon as it stop
heating etc, etc.

NO! It's not a myth. The following is from first hand experience...

I had a 1kw microwave I used for burritos. It died (the transformer
puked); I replaced it with a 1100 watt model; didn't think 100watts
would make much of a difference.. I put my burrito in, set the time,
walked away.. it destroyed my burrito. burnt popcorn smell in my
brand new microwave. Dunno why it smelled like burnt popcorn but, it
did...

Well I guess you should have reduced the time by a factor of 1.1....

Not wanting to be a dishonest ****, I didn't take it back to the
store. I opted to clean it with vinegar and water.

I've heard of someone throwing out a microwave because the bulb's gone, but not because it's dirty....

So, I took a mixing cup, added some vinegar (too much it turned out)
and water. Microwaved it. Observed it begin to bubble up, then it
stopped bubbling. The water was clear as can be, no surface activity.
I thought the new microwave quit working! So, I got real close and
continued watching the mixing cup; not appearing to do a damn thing.
No more bubbles, no nothing. No activity I could see.

Until ... ka ****ing boom! The door safety latches caught it,
otherwise it would have drilled my happy ass right in the face as it
opened violently, spilling super hot ****ing water all over my shoes
(lucky for me, steel toe boots I hadn't removed yet) and alot of
steam that I didn't observe building in the chamber prior to the door
violently opening. I've never had this happen before, so I inquired
about it via a usenet post. Mark Lloyd I think it was explained what
I got to observe first hand; and in hindsight, it was a very stupid
****ing thing for me to have done. Super heating is real, it's not a
myth and it's ****ing dangerous to do. I lucked out, the microwave
wasn't so cheaply made that it let the door hit me in the face with
some force. And the mixing cup didn't explode; I originally thought
the cup broke or something and that's what happened; until I removed
the cup and found it was fine.

There must be some very unusual circumstances to make that happen, because I have actually tried to make it happen on purpose a few times, and it never works. The water simply boils and bubbles over, just like it would on a stove. I think you need an absolutely spotless glass, water with no existing bubbles, perhaps from filling it from the tap, and no movement (I would have thought the vibrations of the turntable would stop it, do you have one of those new turntableless ones?) Maybe the vinegar made it happen? People use it to stop streaking when washing windows. That's not a usual thing to heat.

Put a glass of water in a 900W microwave, and watch it do nothing
for a few minutes, no bubbles, just slowly slowly warming through.
Why not have that twice as fast?

Except it's not just slowly slowly warming through. It's super
heating and is unstable.

Only once it gets to that point. It takes a long time from tapwater temperature to boiling point. That's the time consuming part of cooking something.