CYSF

Presentation

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Hypothesis

Microwaves are used every single day by people around the world to heat up food. The only problem is sometimes, they don’t heat up the food evenly. For example soup, a very commonly mircowaved food. Sometimes when you eat it, some parts are burning hot, while others are still very cold, but why?

Research

We first researched how mircowaves worked before executing the experiments.

A microwave is obviously plugged into the wall where it receives its energy from.Once the energy enters the microwave, the energy is converted into a different kind of energy called electrons. This energy is then transferred into a magnetron. In the magnetron, there are little cavities (spaces) and a big magnet. Once the electromagnetic energy interacts with the magnet, they start spiraling around, causing lots of movement called an oscillating charge.An oscillating charge has the energy moving from the magnetron to the cavities to the magnetron back and forth enough for it to be an electromagnetic wave.

Once that happens, the waves are passed into a tube which leads to the big open space where the food is. After they enter the space, the waves spring off the walls and continue this until they hit the food. They hit the food and enter the food and they encounter water (polar molecules) they make the water molecules convulse at high pace until the water molecules hit each other causing friction which in turn heats the food.

But we can’t forget about how the food is constantly rotating.

Variables

Some Variables could be:

-Mircowaves

We are doing these experiments with seprate mircowaves that could vary based on how much heat and power they use/generate.

After the use of a microwave the interior can be still warm or hot depending on how reccently the microwave has been used. After one microwave has been used and it has not been properly cooled off, and the next expirment takes place the already existing hot air will heat up the the next expirment making it not technically fair.

Procedure

We will be mircowaving 3 items, Kraft Singles Processed Cheese, Hershey Kisses Hugs, and Butter. We will be mircowaving each item 3 times in order to make sure most results stay the same. All items for the Hershey Kiss and Butter experiment will be around same size and weight. In cheese, the cheese are repositioned in order to identify if heatwaves act differently if food is relocated.

Hershey Kisses Butter Cheese

Observations

For Experiment Number One, aka cheese, it was mostly burnt around the edges and rather not in the middle.

First Attempt:

In the first attempt, we can see that there are visible burn marks on the edges but not the middle.

Second Attempt:

In the second attempt, we can see the edges are more visibly burnt compared to 1.

Third Attempt:

In the 3rd attempt, there are little to no visible burns.

For the Second Experiment, aka chocolate, the kisses were barely deformed.

First Attempt:

For the First bowl put into the microwave for 30 seconds nothing really happened it just got wider at the base and shorter.

Second Attempt:

For the second bowl which was put in for 30 seconds, almost nothing happened to it visually except for these bumps that appeared.

Third Attempt:

For the third bowl which again was put in for 30 seconds, weirdly nothing visually changed about it.

For the third experiment, aka butter, the butter melted almost immeadiatly, with small chunks inside.

First Attempt:

For the first bowl microwaved for 30 seconds, it left a small piece pretty close to the center of the bowl in a pool of butter liquid

Second Attempt:

For the second bowl microwaved for 30 seconds, it appeared that no butter was left and it had all melted.

Third Attempt:

For the third bowl microwaved for 30 seconds, it appears that it left 2 similarly sized small chunks not in the center of the bowl, in a pool of butter liquid.

Analysis

From all 3 experiments, the cheese, chocolate, and butter, we noticed that each time, the result was different. For example, for the butter, our first attempt still had a decent chunk of butter remaining, but on the second attempt, it fully melted. This may be caused by the heat from the attempt prior, but in the 3rd attempt, there was still a small solid piece of butter. Same with the cheese, as the first attempt had burnt parts almost randomly, the 2nd mainly had burnt parts around the edges, and the 3rd barely had any.

Conclusion

After the experiments with the cheese, chocolate, and butter have been completed we can see if our hypothesis was correct.

Before we thought the air in the microwaves was being heated up and that was how the item inside got warm, but while researching how a microwave works we found out it's a little different, the actual way a microwave heats an item is my sending electromagnetic waves which then interacts with the item, these waves can be all different sizes and they go at different speeds so when they bounce inside the microwave we can measure those. So in conclusion it is random.

Application

This project can demonstrate how to properly mircowave your food for even heat distribution, and why we should reinvent the microwave.

Sources Of Error

We used 2 different mircowaves to complete this project. The 2 mircowaves may output differently from eachother.

In Experiment number 1, different amounts of cheese were used for each third of the experiment to avoid food waste. This may cause for slightly different results for each.