Shekerah Primus 0:03
What can you do your love of science we'll tell you?
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of We love science. The podcast where we discuss all the things that you can do with your level of science. We're your hosts. I'm Shekerah,
Fatu Badiane-Markey 0:42
and I'm Fatu, and today we're going to talk about the accidental scientific discovery that changed the way we cook our food. And no, we're not talking about accidentally burning a steak on the grill, although that would be amazing.
Shekerah Primus 0:55
Mmmmm Steak, that sounds delicious
You know, I want some right now. But no, we're not talking about burning steak. Today we're going to talk about the microwave oven. Now you can microwave steak, but I wouldn't recommend it . Although if you've ever had steak-ummms, have you ever had steak-ummmms Fatu
Fatu Badiane-Markey 1:24
No I've never had steak-ummms,
Shekerah Primus 1:26
Me either, but I've heard of them. Or if you've reheated like a Philly cheesesteak sandwich or something. Those are really delicious. Then you've probably microwaved steak so it's okay.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 1:38
Look, I enjoy a good steak as much as the next person, being in the Philly area, I definitely enjoy my Philly cheese steaks. I would recommend heating them up in like a toaster oven or an oven though, if you're gonna do the whole eating it next day thing because then the bread gets kind of weird, you know?
Shekerah Primus 1:57
Okay, so you're all for steak?
Fatu Badiane-Markey 2:00
Oh, yeah, girl. Oh, yeah.
Shekerah Primus 2:03
Okay, so today we're talking about the accidental discovery that led to the invention of the microwave oven. And it all started with a scientist named Percy Spencer.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 2:18
So who was Percy, what's going on with him?
Shekerah Primus 2:21
Percy Spencer was an engineer working for the Raytheon Corporation. And this is back in the 1930s, 1940s around there. So one day while working on a radar system, he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. So question for you, Fatu. If you ever find a melted candy bar in your pocket, what would you do?
Fatu Badiane-Markey 2:50
I would maybe throw it away in the garbage or stick it in the freezer.
Shekerah Primus 2:58
Oh stick it in the freezer, That's a good one.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people would throw away the candy bar and go about their day, right. But I'd be willing to bet that if we did a poll, maybe 50 to 16% of people will say that they'll eat it anyway.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 3:18
Depends on the candy bar.
Shekerah Primus 3:20
Depends on the candy bar absolutely depends on the candy bar
so then, so you know, stick it in the fridge or eh its chocolate, stick it in your mouth. You know, it's good to go. It's gonna melt in your mouth anyway. Yeah. So the remaining 40 to 49% of people. They'll be like, ooh, gross. It's all melted and ooey, gooey or whatever, and they'll throw it away. So they would probably just assume that the chocolate bar got melted by maybe their body heat or heat from the sun right and those are perfectly reasonable assumptions. But only a small percentage of people would actually ask a question and try to determine why did it melt. And Percy was in that like 1% or whatever of people right? He was a scientist. And he was curious and that's what's so important. He was curious, and he wondered what caused the candy bar to melt. So, after some investigation, he discovered that it was the microwave radiation from the radar system that heated up the candy bar and caused it to melt.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 4:28
interesting. So what are radar systems?
Shekerah Primus 4:32
Well, we've all at least heard about radar, right? Even, you know, just when watching a movie or something. And the way that it works is that radar systems use electromagnetic waves to detect and track objects.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 4:50
Okay. Okay. So what are electromagnetic waves?
Shekerah Primus 4:58
Okay Im throwing a lot of terms at you today right?
Fatu Badiane-Markey 4:58
doing a lot of deep polls over here.
Shekerah Primus 5:00
Okay, so to put it simply
electromagnetic waves electromagnetic waves are just invisible waves of energy that travel through the air. So think of it as like when you try to catch a cell phone signal, right? So you're in a remote area. You really need to make that call and check their Twitter or whatever you're trying to catch a cellphone signal. You can't see the signal. Right? But you know, it's there somewhere up in the air.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 5:31
So that's basically why people hold their post up as high as they can and wave them about in the air. They're trying to - wait for it - to catch a signal.
Shekerah Primus 5:47
So this signal from the cell phone tower,
you know it's there even though you can't see it, you just gotta find it right? Similar to a cell phone tower, radar sends out these invisible beams invisible waves of energy. When this energy touches an object, it is reflected so basically the energy bounces off the object back to the radar dish. This reflected energy tells us where an object is, how fast it's moving, and what direction it's moving. So that's pretty cool, right? We can get a lot of information about an object, even if it's too far away to see.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 6:30
That's pretty cool. It sounds
like it's similar to an echo or you know, like sound waves bouncing off of the surface. Yeah,
Shekerah Primus 6:38
yeah, exactly. It's actually a similar phenomenon, for sure. And these electromagnetic waves of energy, are very effective at detecting objects like airplanes. So that's why radar is used by air traffic control to guide airplanes safely through the air. So you might have wondered how all those planes up in the air avoid crashing into each other right? Because unlike us, like in the car driving down the road, we can see all the other cars around us. Right? But airplanes are so enclosed that they're so large, you can't see that much. We have all these mirrors - front view, back view side view we have a whole bunch of mirrors to see when we're driving on the road, right? But in the air, the airplanes don't have that. But what happens is that we use radar to detect where all those planes are. So then the air traffic controllers can guide them successfully.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 7:35
Okay? That's kind of cool. And planes also have transponders right to help identify them.
Shekerah Primus 7:42
Yeah, yeah, they
have transponders. They have to have flight plans that they need to follow they got collision avoidance system. So they have a lot of other things going on that play a role in just keeping us safe in the air. Right but the radar is definitely definitely key. But other than official used by air traffic controllers, and of course cops, using their radar guns to catch us when we're speeding on the highway. Raise your hand if you've been there. I have.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 8:19
Not me. Im not speeding
Shekerah Primus 8:25
Oh youre such a goody. Okay, I've done a little bit if speeding on the highway. But a lot of us use radar too in our everyday lives, right. For example, many modern cars use radar technology. So if your car has adaptive cruise control, or collision avoidance, and you use radar too, all the time, because that's basically how your car can detect the distance and the speed of other vehicles on the road.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 8:32
Interesting, yeah. So radar is very important. And I know it's also used for tracking storms right?
Shekerah Primus 8:59
Yeah.
Storms that makes me think of Joey the storm chaser. Yeah, so electromagnetic waves can bounce off of, you know, atmospheric phenomena rain, snow and hail. Similar to bouncing off of an airplane and able to track the progress of the storm that day.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 9:18
Cool. So we're talking about microwaves though. So how is radar linked to microwaves.
Shekerah Primus 9:27
Okay, so we know that radar uses electromagnetic waves, which are basically waves of energy to track and locate objects, right? So the specific type of energy waves that's produced and used by radar are called microwaves. So microwaves have a shorter wavelength than the longer radio waves that we use when we're listening to the radio, which is what makes them better for radar to detect objects like airplanes and ships, and cars. So basically, Percy Spencer was working on a radar system, which uses a device called the magnetron to produce microwaves, and we'll have a nice companion blog post going, going into this a bit more.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 10:24
Nice, okay. And that was the breakthrough. That led to the invention of the microwave oven itself so Percy realized that if microwaves could heat up a candy bar in his pocket, it could be used to cook food.
Shekerah Primus 10:40
Yeah, yeah. That's so cool that's exactly what he did. That is such a cool like observation to me and then to that into a microwave oven. Right. And like, everyone, almost everyone has a microwave. So it's really cool. He developed the first microwave oven from that observation, and it was called the Radarange. Radarange. I like that name - Rad-range
Fatu Badiane-Markey 11:06
sounds a little dangerous.
Shekerah Primus 11:15
But i mean that was an amazing breakthrough in cooking technology technology, right? You could just pop a plate of food and you know, it'll be warmed up or cooked in a very, very short amount of time. Compared to doing it on the stove or the oven. But the thing is that first microwave oven at Radarange whoo that thing was huge girl I mean it was about the size of a refrigerator. It was huge Yes. Can you imagine if our current microwave ovens were still that huge?
Fatu Badiane-Markey 11:51
I dont think anyone would have one right, I wouldnt have one, like what are you going to do with two huge like you have the refrigerator and then you're gonna have this like radarange like your kitchen is full. No more, no more space. But why was it so big? Like what's going on?
Shekerah Primus 12:13
Yeah, yeah, I
agree. So if it was that big, It definitely would not have been as versatile and useful and as highly, you know, widely adopted as the current teeny tiny little microwave is, but it was so huge back then in the early days because basically what they did was they took a radar system and modified it, you know, repurposed it for cooking. So instead of, you know, a magnetron with an antenna to shoot microwaves into the sky for radar. It was a magnetron inside of a giant metal box to contain the microwaves in the box where you you know, put your food to be heated or cooked. So that yeah, they basically just modified a radar system and said, Hey, we're gonna use this now for cooking, put in your kitchen.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 13:08
wow, I literally have like, no words, like so. They were just like, okay, well, this can heat food so let's just throw a radar in your kitchen. I'm sorry, but okay. So, I mean, clearly the technology has been refined and miniaturized since then, right. I mean, no one has. I mean, I mean I don't even know if any of these original ones are still around, but no one now has a refrigerator sized microwave. Right. And we have microwave ovens in almost every kitchen in America.
Shekerah Primus 13:41
Yeah. Yeah. It would actually be really cool to see one of those just, you know, I bet they're like in museums and things.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 13:48
I would think so. Especially if it still works because you know, back in the day, like things are built solid, you know?
Shekerah Primus 13:57
Yeah less things to go wrong, I guess. Yeah.
But, Thank God that we have these teeny tiny microwaves that we can just
carry around. You know. It's amazing that it all started from this first accidental discovery.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 14:16
That's so cool. And you know, that's the wonderful thing about Science because you never know where the inspiration is gonna come from like you know, Percy Spencer, just walking around, doing his job and he stumbled upon the idea for the microwave oven you know,
Shekerah Primus 14:30
From a candy bar!
Fatu Badiane-Markey 14:32
Yeah. Like, if I was him, I would have thought it was just my body heat or the sun. Like I feel like he was definitely very observational to be like, wait maybe it's something that I'm actually working with but if it was up to me, we would not have invented the microwave oven because I've been like Dagnabbit my body heat melted this candy bar. So I guess the next time you're eating a microwave meal think about Percy Spencer and this accidental discovery. And it goes to show that sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from the most unexpected places.
I like that.
Shekerah Primus 15:10
Yes, they do. And who knows. Maybe the next big discovery will come from an accidental observation made by one of our listeners made by one of you, made by you. Yes, you. So remember to keep your eyes and ears open and just let yourself be curious, because you might discover something wonderful.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 15:34
yeah, and
definitely, you know, make those good observations. Don't be like me. Absolutely amazing. Thanks Shekerah
Shekerah Primus 15:44
observe and then ask questions, right.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 15:47
Yeah, yeah totally.
Shekerah Primus 15:49
So that's it for today's accidental discovery. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of We love science podcast. Until next time,
Bye.
Fatu Badiane-Markey 15:59
Bye guys