Microwaves
Someone on YouTube just pissed me off by saying cooking stuff in the microwave makes it irradiated. Like it’d be radioactive or some shit.
I want to tell you peeps how utterly ridiculous that statement is.
Harmful radiation, the type that comes from radioactive elements for example, is harmful because it’s what we call ionizing radiation. This means radiation strong enough, such that a single photon has enough energy to ionize an atom if it hits it. Rip an electron from it’s grasp. Splinter it’s hull, basically.
Typical ionization energies are in the ballpark of 10 eV according to Google.
eV stands for Electron-Volts, a unit of energy used in many particle physics calculations because it’s handily sized for them and it works well with typical scenarios too. It is defined as the kinetic energy an electron gains from being accelerated by an electric field of one volt. Thus, electron-Volt.
I remember from the top of my head that for example hydrogen has an ionization energy of 13.6 eV (thanks last two semesters), so that energy range absolutely checks out.
Oh, and this ionizing radiation is definitely harmful, no questions about it.
However, microwave photons are not ionizing. Not even remotely close to it, in fact. I just googled a typical commercial microwave frequency, and it corresponds to a single photon energy of around, guess what, 0.01 meV. The small m here stands for milli-, so meV meaning a thousandth of an electron-Volt.
Therefore, as you can see, microwave radiation is roughly a factor of one million times weaker than needed to become ionizing radiation.
So how does the heating work then if it’s so weak that it can’t affect atoms?
Because it affects molecules. Microwave energies are in the same range as vibrational and rotational energy state changes in molecules like water. They’re too weak to break apart molecules, much less atoms themselves, but they can make them jiggle.
Which is, in essence, what temperature is. A measure of molecule jigglyness.
Now to be fair, this method of heat transfer does affect the food differently then for example a stove or a fire would. It doesn’t break atom hulls or molecules, but it can rip apart a chain of connected molecules into unconnected molecules. This results in effects like a loss of elasticity in noodles or stickyness in rice, when cooked in a microwave. It also completely fucks up sauces, which will just start to flake.
So i understand if someone doesn’t like making food in the microwave for any of those reasons. I’m not that picky, but then again i’m a person without any culinary culture, so what do i know?
However, if anyone seriously believes heating food in a microwave makes it irradiated and harmful to eat, then newsflash buddy: You have no idea what you are talking about!
