Microwave Power - a surprise result
You know how it says on some packets "...heating times given are for a 1000 watt Microwave oven"? I carried out an experiment today with interesting results.
Shortly I am going on a short trip with my daughter as a precursor to our trip to Camerons Corner in May. I have a small microwave oven in my camper which I wanted to test out for one particular purpose.
I have these plastic/metal devices for boiling eggs in a microwave which basically consist of a Faraday cage for the egg (to stop it exploding) which is cooked by steam from a small amount of water contained outside the Faraday cage.
The same device is used regularly in my kitchen in a much larger microwave so I wanted to test how long it takes for the small microwave to boil the water (obviously once boiling the time taken to cook the egg(s) is the same).
One tablespoon of water is all that is required so I put the 20ml in a shot glass so I could see how long it took to boil in each microwave.
The 950 watt microwave in the kitchen took 26 seconds to bring the 20ml to boiling however in the 750watt microwave in the camper it only took 18 seconds.
I have read that not only the power but the volume and shape of a the oven has a lot to do with the microwave oven's effectiveness/efficiency and the lower power microwave oven is much smaller than the kitchen one. Even so I thought it was quite a surprising result - previously I have calculated the time required for cooking/heating in proportion to the wattage but it appears that is not necessarily the case.
Fascinating eh?