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posted by martyb on Monday August 19 2019, @04:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the Common-sense-is-not-that-common dept.

A while back there was an article about a man whose hand was scalded after he nuked a cup of water in the microwave. A cautionary tale, with the punchline being that microwaving food can store energy in the material being heated which can then violently erupt when the material is disturbed.

A woman has been possibly blinded in one eye after her microwaved eggs exploded:

She said: "I googled to see if you could make boiled eggs in the microwave.

"There are endless websites and YouTube videos which say you can. The one I read, though, was the set of instructions on recipe website, Delish.

"It said that you could microwave the eggs as long as you add salt to the eggs in the water to prevent them from bursting.

"The instructions then said to leave the eggs in the microwave for between six and eight minutes. Being cautious, I did six and took them out.

"As I looked into the jug to see if the eggs were done, they went bang in my face.

"It only happened as I took them out. The eggs were fine in the microwave."

This is another example of the everyday acts that people undertake in their daily lives which can have devastating consequences if not handled correctly.

Have we failed society by not teaching basic science lessons at school? I love how microwave popcorn has a warning on the outside to remove the outer packing first, and the iron warning tag advising to not iron clothes on the body.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:23AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:23AM (#882065)

    Just keep a popsicle-stick handy, and drop the popsicle-stick in the cup of water you are going to microwave. Put it away when done to be reused again.

    The rough edges of the wood (from the water molecule size level) gives the water molecules something to nucleate upon, and you won't have any problems with "exploding" microwaved water from then on.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @12:21PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 19 2019, @12:21PM (#882073) Journal

    Just keep a popsicle-stick handy, and drop the popsicle-stick in the cup of water you are going to microwave.

    Somehow, I find the idea of soft wood infusion in my oolong quite unappealing.

    How long it takes to reach boiling temperature is not that hard to learn or remember and the temperature scales approx linearly with the time - I can easily hit (within +-4C) target temperatures lower than 100C.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @02:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @02:22AM (#882445)

      For the same volume of water, yes, with some experimentation you can work out the exact time.

      But then when needing to heat/boil a differing size volume of water, you are back to experimenting yet again (sometimes for a one-off amount).

      The popsicle-stick simply just works, every time, no matter the chosen water volume at that time, without having to think about "how long" (beyond rough estimates).

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @12:50PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 19 2019, @12:50PM (#882083) Journal

    The rough edges of the wood (from the water molecule size level) gives the water molecules something to nucleate upon

    After I considered the use a minute amount of polonium for nucleation purposes, I remembered the good ol' C-x M-c M-butterfly [xkcd.com]

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford