The microwave plasma mystery

I've posted about plasma before, specifically from Veritasium.  That video does a great job explaining why halved grapes - and other similarly sized, primarily water objects - can create plasma in a microwave oven

Today's video looks at why plasma can be created from non-water systems like matches under an upside-down beaker, something I've tried before and can verify the ease of it working.

Just to protect myself legally, don't try this at home. Be smart, folks.

I promise this story about microwaves is interesting.

"By a strange twist of fate, the microwave was invented to meet a need to heat hamsters humanely in 1950s laboratories."

Seriously, that quote was the initial spark that lead Tom Scott down the rabbit hole to eventually create this video.

And I'm thrilled that it did, because the quote is kind of true. 

It wasn't the need that eventually lead the first person to create a commercially viable microwave oven, but it certainly was a need that a British scientist had when he and his colleagues were experimenting on cryogenic freezing of mammals and then bringing them back to life.

The story - and the interview with James Lovelock himself - is brilliant and incredibly weird.

You CAN melt glass in a microwave (microwaves explained) - Filmed from the inside #3

The concept that you can melt glass in a microwave oven - as long as you heat the area to near-melting with a blow torch first - seems like a bit of a cheat.

Steve Mould does go on to explain how microwave radiation works to heat food - causing the water molecules in the liquid state to vibrate in the microwave field. This is based on the polarity of the water molecule as well as its ability to freely move.

If the water were locked in a solid lattice (like in ice), those molecules aren't able to vibrate back and forth nearly as easily, hence why ice doesn't heat - or defrost - well in a microwave.

And Mould uses that to his advantage to take glass to the nearly-molten stage, allowing the molecules to move freely and absorb the microwave radiation causing them to heat more and move more freely. He doesn't, sadly, explain why the glass molecules - a network of SiO₂ as far as I know - respond to the microwave field similarly to how water does.