Yes exactly. They are only for heating up molecules that have a dipole, like hydrogen chloride, ozone, ammonia, and some other probably unimportant ones.
Well this comment sent me on a bit of a deep dive. My statistical thermodynamics prof told us that microwaves only affect waters dipole, but it seems like they affect all polar molecules, like you say. Maybe it’s a semantics/language thing because I can imagine we could pick the microwave size to match its dipole. It’s been too long. I’d need to crack open some scary textbooks again. Hmm
Ah… my physics course was very short, and tried to cover a bit of everything, because I did Computer Science. So I really don’t know the details. I just assumed it would apply to any polar molecule to some degree and looked up random ones for that joke.
I do know that Microwaves use a frequency around 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz, they can disturb Wifi if they leak. But I assume that is just because the unlicensed ISM band is there, and hasn’t got anything to do with water specifically.
Yes exactly. They are only for heating up molecules that have a dipole, like hydrogen chloride, ozone, ammonia, and some other probably unimportant ones.
Well this comment sent me on a bit of a deep dive. My statistical thermodynamics prof told us that microwaves only affect waters dipole, but it seems like they affect all polar molecules, like you say. Maybe it’s a semantics/language thing because I can imagine we could pick the microwave size to match its dipole. It’s been too long. I’d need to crack open some scary textbooks again. Hmm
Ah… my physics course was very short, and tried to cover a bit of everything, because I did Computer Science. So I really don’t know the details. I just assumed it would apply to any polar molecule to some degree and looked up random ones for that joke.
I do know that Microwaves use a frequency around 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz, they can disturb Wifi if they leak. But I assume that is just because the unlicensed ISM band is there, and hasn’t got anything to do with water specifically.