this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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The chemist in me is so sad 😞 what’s wrong with the microwave for heating water? That’s it’s one job in life
Domestic microwave ovens rarely offer more than 1kW of power, while a regular British kettle is 3kW. It takes ages to boil a cuppa in the microwave and that's unacceptable!
Hey, that’s not bad!!! Doesn’t work here in Canada but now I’m really curious about it in Europe/UK. Gotta love the extra volts 💪
Extra volts are great! We can also get three phases if needed, that's how domestic EV chargers go up to 22kW or something :) Three phases in the UK get you 240V x 300A, but you are not allowed a single device to have more than 30A per phase I believe.
Ugh, I’m so jealous. My car is currently charging off of 110V at 12 amps 😭
Move to Europe!
I was planning on it, but my country needs me 😞 🇨🇦 maybe later if things calm down.
I think they believe we’re heating the cup with the tea bag in it or smth, instead of just heating water. Idk. It’s lunacy.
Yeah, I agree, it’s something like that. Ive never really gotten a concrete answer from anyone for why they won’t use a microwave to heat water. The best I’ve gotten is “that’s not a what a microwave is for”.
It's inefficient if you're heating up multiple cups. A kettle of water takes about the same time as microwaving one cup. Americans often make one cup of tea, while Brits expect everyone within several blocks to pop in for a cuppa.
That makes sense, especially in a place with 240V
Yeah, microwaves aren't for making water hot, they're for making food hot AND DON'T TRY TO EXPLAIN HOW THEY WORK MAGIC MAN!
The only thing you need to know is: don't put metal in the science oven!
Why? My last one came with a metal rack.
If metal rack can go in science oven, metal must not be a big issue.
This is the only reason.
smooth good. pointy bad.
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.
"What is my purpose?"
You make a mid cup of tea.
dejected appliance noises
Microwaves are also one of the best methods for cooking vegetables due to minimal nutrients being sucked out by water (unless you're drinking your boiled broccoli water of course) and no charring (yummy cancer) but it's seen as inferior by most.
That said I've literally never cooked tofu in the microwave and I'm hesitant to even try lol
A microwave is also surprisingly good at melting chocolate.
Don't boil... blanch.
Most veggies I cook are either sautéed or roasted.
Steamed microwave veggies are great! For when you just want a lazy veggie side and don't wanna cook after work.