I microwaved some leftovers and the microwaves basically etched into the plastic deli lid. Normal lid for comparison

    by okcomputers97

    20 Comments

    1. Aren’t microwaves a lot bigger? These look like tiny waves. I thought the waves of a microwave were around 20 cm, with nodes around the 10 cm. It’s a cool pattern and I’m curious to know how this formed!

    2. CatacombOfYarn on

      Was there a bit of water in there that maybe melted the plastic when certain parts of the water got heated up?

    3. alvenestthol on

      That’s not how the microwaves would actually look though

      Household microwaves are typically 2.4GHz (same as Wi-Fi!), which gives it a wavelength of a whole 12.2 centimeters. The pattern of the electric field looks more like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microwaveoventransient.webm), big blobs shifting inside the microwave oven, rather than small wavy-waves you might expect

      That pattern most likely formed because the plastic already had weak-points along those lines, and the uneven expansion caused by the heating just caused the cracks to properly form.

    4. Snotmyrealname on

      Folks microwaving food in plastic like they expect they’ll never die.

      And we wonder why ass cancer is the leading cause of death for folks under 50

    5. That isn’t directly caused by the microwave. Your microwave has a wavelength of about 12cm. It would also be in either straight lines if the dish was unmoving, or in a very different pattern if the dish was on the carousel.

      This is likely heat related, exposing weaker parts of the plastic with thermal expansion.

    6. aliendude5300 on

      Microwaving plastic is generally pretty bad. I would at least have taken the lid off and put it in another microwave safe container

    7. are you sure it wasnt like that prior? looks like bead roll coming off the extruder.

    8. Those are not ‘etched microwaves’, that is just an artifact from manufacturing the lid that became visible by heating it too much.

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