Microwaves have become an essential part of every household kitchen. It is hardly possible to find a house without one nowadays. They are the most convenient and easiest machines to work it, especially when you have leftovers to enjoy during a busy hour.
But have you ever wondered how hot a microwave gets to reheat your leftovers evenly and adequately? Because whenever it comes to cooking or heating, the temperature is always the prime concern of every owner.
So, how hot does a microwave get?
Actually, it is impossible to measure the highest temperature of a microwave oven. Because microwaves do not heat themselves up, instead, it majorly depends on the food you are trying to heat or cook inside one. Different food gets heated up at different temperatures and speeds by the electromagnetic microwave energy – the microwave itself does not have any heating element like other conventional ovens. But since it’s basically the water content of the food that determines how hot foods can get, the highest temperature microwave can heat up to is 212°F (100°C).
This must be baffling to understand at one go. But don’t worry. With the explanations below, you will have a clearer understanding of how microwaves heat food and what the object has to do with it.
How do microwave ovens heat food?
When we talk about the hotness of a microwave, it is rather funny how we all have a wrong conception. Microwaves are not appliances that work like a stove or a conventional oven.
They do not heat themselves up to make our food warm. Instead, what microwaves do is, they excite the molecule in our food and allow them to vibrate and rub against each other to generate heat.
What happens is, when we use a microwave, it produces high-frequency radio waves of 4.7 inches into the cooking cavity. Those waves are produced at a frequency of 2.45 GHz, which causes the elements of the food, especially the water, fats, and sugar content, to vibrate and rub against one another back forth for over a billion times per second. That process results in high energy friction in the food, which produces heat in a similar way as it does when we rub our hands against each other. This movement process is known as dielectric heating.
Therefore, with more moisture content in a food, the more will be the vibration producing heat. That is the reason why we see some foods getting hotter quicker than others. When there is less moisture or no moisture in the food, they will hardly get heated in a microwave.
And as mentioned earlier, it is the moisture content that majorly determines the heat. Thus, the highest temperature a microwave can produce would be equal to the highest boiling point of water, which is 100 °C.
However, sometimes it is possible that water molecules can overheat up to 120 °C. But when that happens, there are high chances that the material used to contain the food will react adversely and damage itself.
So, if you ask how hot a microwave can get, it is an interesting way to answer that it can get hot until the object inside gets destroyed.
