🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ryu.728070649@husc.harvard.edu> ryu@husc8.harvard.edu (William Ryu) writes:
>	I was wondering what was the major cause of uneven microwave
>cooking.

The fact that it's extremely difficult to design a microwave source (or
just about any high frequency source) that provides a nice, planar
radiation coverage.  (This analogy is a little strained, but consider a
light bulb pointing in one direction [as in from the magnetron] -- trying
to get the light to all an entire box [the cooking compartment] evenly is
difficult.)

>  Is it a hardware problem or is it simply because most foods are
>inhomogenous and absorb the microwaves unevenly.

The inhomogeneity of the foods is somewhat of a problem, which is why we
have the proponderonse (sp.) of "microwave" brownies, pizza, etc.
Microwaves are tuned to heat up water most effectively, so things with
little water in them (i.e., non-microwave popcorn) don't cook well.

>  Also why do many frozen
>instructions ask you to turn the food or use one of those food spinners? 
>Is the distrubution of the microwaves that uneven.

Unfortunately, yes.

>  Last question.  My
>G.E. microwave has a antenna that spins right below the microwave top and
>is encased behind a plastic enclosure.  What does that do?

It's supposed to change the radiation pattern within the microwave so that
each part of the oven is exposed to a more even power level.  Same idea as
a turntable, but different implementation.  (Going back to the light bulb
analogy, it's similar to those rotating mirrored balls they have at discos.
:-) )

I don't know what "State of the Art" in microwave oven design is today, but
I can say that our 3 year old Sharp with a turntable doesn't suffer from
uneven heating caused by uneven radiation.  It does, of course, still
suffer from the fact that all the food's not a hot dog.

						---Joel Kolstad