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What Should My Pin Type Moisture Meter Read on Oak

Have you always wondered if your microwave oven leaks radiation? If and so, it turns out there is a pretty simple exam to check the radiation seal on your microwave oven.

But, before nosotros go into that, allow'south find out what exactly goes on within one.

How does a microwave cook food?

Have you ever wondered how that magical metal box in your kitchen heats upwardly nutrient and drinks? As it turns out, the process of "cooking" foods in a microwave oven is actually pretty interesting.

The secret comes from the namesake of the machine — microwaves. In case you unaware, these are a type of electromagnetic radiations (like light and radio waves) that lie towards the longer wavelength of the EM spectrum.

diy microwave leak test
Source: Jimmy Tan/Flickr

Microwaves have frequencies ranging from virtually 1 billion cycles per second (one GHz) up to 300 times that and have wavelengths (the distance between peaks) of between 12 inches (30 cm) and 0.04 inches (ane mm). To put that into perspective, radio waves typically accept wavelengths varying from 1 mm to 100 km, and the light visible to our human being eyes roughly falls between 380 to 700 nanometers (a sheet of newspaper is typically100,000 nanometers thick).

Inside a microwave oven, microwaves are generated in a piece of tech chosen a magnetron and are beamed into the metallic interior of the microwave oven. Here, annihilation you put inside the microwave oven (food or beverage, etc) absorbs these rays.

These microwaves excite the water molecules within the nutrient/drink, causing it to heat up apace. The higher the water content inside the target food/drink, the faster they tend to melt, so that moist items cook a lot faster than more desiccated items.

For bigger chunks of food, the microwaves really merely melt the outermost layers of the food, with the inner $.25 cooked via conduction of oestrus from the outside in.

With all that radiation shooting around inside the microwave oven, it is apparently not platonic to have much of it leaking exterior the box. For this reason, devices similar microwave ovens must become through rigorous testing before they can exist released for general use.

How exercise your test your microwave for radiation leakage?

While very high standards are typically set for the tolerable levels of microwave leakage from microwave ovens, some microwaves can, and inevitably will escape. So, how practise yous examination how effective the microwave shielding is on your microwave?

Equally information technology turns out, there is actually quite a simple test.

How to Check If Your Microwave Has a Radiation Leak
Source: Apoltix/Wikimedia commons

A fascinating, if not slightly disconcerting video past Physics Girl shows us why we should probably all check our microwave ovens. Her simple experiment shows the states that there is an easy and effective manner to cheque the integrity of the radiation shielding on your kitchen appliance.

And all it takes is a niggling bit of lateral thinking.

Microwave ovens, similar cell phones, emit radiation in a specific ring of EM frequencies -- specifically radio waves. All things being equal, you should expect that past placing your telephone inside a microwave and closing the door the signal would be blocked past the shell of the microwave oven.

If this is the case, it would also be reasonable to assume that yous shouldn't be able to ring the phone one time it is safely locked inside.

It turns out, this is not really the case. Somehow, and somewhere, EM radiation is able to reach the phone's antennae, resulting in you existence able to call it from outside!

But how?

Equally it turns out, the main form of shielding built into the microwave is a device called a "Faraday cage". These types of devices work dissipating the accuse from EM radiations around their structure. This happens considering electrons in the metallic are excited by the radiations and move throughout the metal structure of the cage, creating an electric field that opposes and cancels out the external wave or field of annihilation within it.

How to Check If Your Microwave Has a Radiation Leak
Source: Miya.m/Wikimedia Commons

In this sense, Faraday cages are effectively hollow conductors. Any breach in the construction of this cage can, theoretically, allow small amounts of EM radiations to "leak" inside (or exterior) of the muzzle.

According to this experiment, it appears this is indeed the example for some microwave ovens.

Do all microwave ovens leak radiation?

This unproblematic experiment is interesting, simply it is not possible to quantify exactly how much leakage your microwave oven may take. For this reason, more than sophisticated means of investigation are required.

For example, are all microwave ovens equal? Mayhap yours is of a lower quality than others?

If y'all were to repeat the experiment using different ovens, as Physics Daughter did, you will likely observe that some practise block the cellphones, while others do not.

Edifice on her findings, she decided to find which part of the microwave was actually letting the radiation escape. Using aluminum foil to act as a near-perfect Faraday cage, she completely wrapped her phone. Sure plenty, no ane was able to telephone call her telephone.

does my microwave leak
Source: Tahir Hasmi/Flickr

The next step was to wrap certain parts of the microwave oven to narrow down and seek out the "leaky" parts. By systematically leaving parts of the microwave unwrapped they hoped to find the leak. It turned out that the door was the about likely culprit.

What are some other simple tests for microwave radiation leaks?

To confirm her theory, Physics Daughter employed the services of a cocky-professed hacker to make use of a HackRF radio transmitter and receiver to conduct a more sophisticated experiment. These devices tin can receive and transmit signals from 1 MHz to half-dozen GHz.

Using the device and a bona fide Faraday cage, they were able to demonstrate that yous shouldn't be able to phone call a phone shielded by one — if it is fully intact.

Next, they tested whether commonly used Wi-Fi signals tin get through the microwave's door. Wi-Fi signals apply a similar frequency to microwave ovens so this is an interesting test. Microwaves typically operate at effectually 2.45 Gigahertz, whilst cellular signals tend to be around i.ix Gigahertz or 850 megahertz.

Sure enough, they were able to FaceTime the phone through the microwave door.

Interestingly, older microwave ovens have been shown to affect the quality of your domestic Wi-Fi routers and devices! Simply, we digress.

Using the same detector they were also able to directly detect microwave free energy outside of the microwave oven as well.

leaky microwaves a problem
Source: Feral Indeed!/Flickr

They hypothesized that the radiation could be exploiting holes in the shielding of the door, assuasive the microwave oven to leak radiation. As Physics Girl points out, her experiments show that some microwaves exercise permit the specific frequencies of mobile phones through, providing articulate evidence that some form of radiations leakage is possible within these appliances.

Physics Daughter does note that their experiment had a very small sample size, did not take into consideration the microwave oven'south age or its proximity to a cellular tower.

These variables could affect the results.

Should yous be worried if you detect that your microwave is leaking?

FDA regulations really allow for a minor amount of leakage over the lifetime of the microwave, of almost 5 mW/cm2at approximately ii inches (v cm) from the oven surface. The radiations itself is not-ionizing so won't damage your DNA directly, rather information technology will excite the water within your soft tissues.

The FDA does warn that loftier exposure to microwaves can lead to a painful burn. Organs like eyes and testes are specially vulnerable considering they accept relatively lilliputian blood period to carry away the rut. Besides, the lens of the human centre is very sensitive to heat. High levels of microwaves could cause cataracts.

The FDA also notes that this kind of impairment would crave a large amount of radiations.

So, should you be concerned if your microwave oven leaks radiation? Put simply, no.

You are more likely to injure yourself from a heated drinking glass of water than the radiation itself. The radiations volition not be in a high enough dose to cause you lot whatever impairment.

does my microwave leak
Leaking microwaves aside, never exit your Stormtrooper toys unattended near microwaves either. Source: DocChewbacca/Flickr

So, fifty-fifty if you notice that your microwave leaks some radiation, information technology is of such a small amount and a non-mutagenic kind, that shouldn't actually lose slumber over it. Though, continuing very shut to your microwave at all times when it is in operation should probably be avoided.

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Source: https://interestingengineering.com/this-simple-test-lets-you-know-if-your-microwave-has-a-radiation-leak

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