Microwave Resistant Ants?

It has to do with the nature of the microwaves, they are emitted in a standing wave which means a quick ant can dodge the waves remaining in the cooler spaces between the waves.....

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=108430

The're good at soccer too....

Here is a study of several different microwave oven heating patterns produced after 30 sec....

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/microwave-oven-diagnostics-with-indian-snack-food/

Feeling a bit adventurous? Here's something you can try: making high-temperature plasmas in the comfort of your own microwave.

Make sure the wife is not home when you try this - unless she's a physicist or an electrical engineer, in which she will be duly impressed with this demo of your engineering prowess, but I digress.

Take a typical carpenter's nail and cut it to a length of 30.6 mm from the nail head.

Sharpen the cut end with a file, but at a 45-degree angle. A more slender tip will melt (more quickly).

Fashion a disk of aluminum foil 61.2 mm in diameter. Use several layers to give it stiffness.

Run the nail up through the exact center of the disk.

Place your brand-new 2.45 GHz microwave resonator assembly at the center of the microwave oven floor. If your microwave has a carousel, you can put it on that if you wish. You can also see what happens when you put it near the edge of the carousel plate so that it turns.

If your oven is properly set at 2.45 GHz and your measurements are accurate, some pretty amazing plasmas will form at the tip of that nail.

Here's another one

1) Put potato in microwave

2) Set microwave to highest setting

3) Set time to 30 minutes and press start

4) Watch the potato carbonise and the potato eyes start to spark blue

5) Stop the test after about 25 minutes when the glass plate shatters.

Interestingly this is actually a real test we used to perform at the electrical safety testing laboratory specifically for microwaves (AS/NZS3500.2.something)

Ah, fun times.

_{Jack - Former Electrical Safety Technician}

Can't vouch for it, but this looks interesting.

I could never get the burning toothpick to work :(

might have to try with a more powerfull microwave :D

The dielectric constant of glass changes with temperature. As glass heats it also becomes more lossy which, in turn, causes it to heat faster. Glass will eventually melt in a microwave oven, as will rocks and some ceramics.

Our shattered glass (it went off like a small explosion) appeared to be the result of spot heating caused by the hot potato unevenly heating the surface. A good example of a hot potato.

Why? Because those ants are much shorter than the wavelength, and because they are near the metal walls and/or floor of the oven, the electric field part of the microwave drops off to zero very quickly. It's the electric-field component of those microwaves that does the cooking (the other one is the magnetic-field component, which induces electric current to flow in the walls but otherwise does nothing to cook food - nor ants). And since the electric field is zero at the metal walls and floor, it must also be zero at the other end of that distance. So where is it at a maximum? Halfway.

Consumer microwave ovens operate at 2.45 gigahertz. This translates to a wavelength of 4.80 inches (122 millimeters). Not very micro compared to an ant. No problemo.

2.40 inches above that floor - half that wavelength - and those ants will experience a somewhat different fate.

Now, if you can arrange for them to be about this distance from the metal floor or walls of your oven, you'll see what I mean...

<...arrange for them to be about this distance from the metal floor or walls of your oven...>

The world is a very 2-dimensional place to an ant. They don't fly or leap, and being of small weight are largely unaffected by the direction of gravity, though they do climb over each other. Getting them to the desired location will be difficult, though rather spectacular when achieved.

Ants stuck to clear packing tape stuck to a flat piece of styrofoam held up by toothpicks. I tried negotiating with them too but it doesn't work. :-)))

And you're still cooking food in it?

No, it appears to to be surviving the attempt.

Too much time on your hands?

If the ants are surviving the microwave, you can take them outside, (on a sunny day), and fry them with a magnifying glass. I haven't done it since I was 6 or 7 years old, but it was pretty fun.

The same reason that some of us can run around the earth and avoid getting smashed.

Fear and dumb luck.

Why are you putting ants and possibly other living things in your microwave anyway?

Have you tried the cat yet?

The cat already moved out and moved a few doors down...must have heard the screaming coming from the microwave.

If we put you in a microwave and turn it on you would run around too!

Zombie Ants.......has to be a head shot.

...always double tap

I wish I could help with the experiment, but we don't have a microwave. In fact, we haven't had one for almost two years (will be two years at the end of May).

Okay ... I know, I know. The microwave oven is in the garage, sitting safely in the nice cardboard box with styrofoam around it. I don't want to upset it from the nice comfortable home, so I think I'll leave that wonderful microwave oven alone for another year or so.

???

We need to have one over the stove, because of limited counter space. It's been sitting there for almost two years - it seems like there is never enough time to get things done. However, I just installed two of these at our rental properties. They provide income for us, so they get first priority!

I guess you got to eat them raw.

Well wavelength and field distribution certainly explain part of this phenomenon. The better answer is this; Microwaves work because their center frequency is set at the resonant frequency of water. The uwaves vibrate the water molecules increasing the temp of the water and cooking the food. Ants contain very little water and are very good at regulating their temp! This is the same situation you have with popcorn. The small kernels of popcorn have very little water. The answer; Put a foil coated sheet of paper on the bottom of your oven, then insert your ants and fire it up. Dead ant, dead ant..... Dedant,dedant,dedant............!! The foil both reflects and shortens the uwaves, it also heats up due to ufield effects!

Urban myth. The resonant frequency of water molecules is well into in the terahertz. Water is a lossy dielectric at microwave-oven frequencies. Water heats in a microwave by means of these losses, not through resonance. Moreover, droplets of water near the oven's metal walls do not heat for the same reason ants do not: the electric field near the walls drops to zero and it is the electric field that does the cooking.

Ants aside, the vegetariaian option is frosen carrot chunks (nice sharp edges) that can spark rather well.

Moist tissue is a fairly good way of finding out what is going on within a microwave oven.

The techno-cognositi can bash me, but half an or with me and you'ld never look back

An open face peanut butter sandwich puts on quite a light show too.

As do electronically enhanced ID cards...don't ask me how I know this...

You say "some species of ants": you mean you've tried several species and only some survive?

Florida is over run with 'fast' ants this year, or maybe sugar ants they are sometimes called. They fry pretty quickly but last year I had another variety and none of the died in the microwave. I always put a paper towel in so sometimes they are hiding on it.

Then, my apologies are due. My comment was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek. When the emphasis is put on "some species" this becomes a much more interesting question.

Are the different ants about the same size?

You said that they run around: is there any noticeable difference to the way that the survivors position themselves compared to the doomed variety?

I think it may be a combination of low moisture content and standing waves that does it. I also have no idea how hot an ant has to get in order to kill it, apparently somewhere between microwave and magnifying glass............

Fire ants. :-))

Damn, I just saw a nature documentary about silver coloured ants running around in the African Sahara desert. I think they died at around 60-70 degrees C after about 10 minutes of exposure in the full mid-day sun (but don't quote me on that).

Be careful you don't get reported to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelity of Ants (ASPCA).

... or Plonkers against the Experimental Thermalization of Ants!

_{Del made me say that. Or Kris. One or the other. Wasn't me.}

JohnDG - Posting Anonymously.