If you microwave a rock for long enough can you make it into lava?

Answer 1

Alas, it wouldnt, microwaves work by heaitng up water molecules within the object in the microwave, by making them move and transfer energy - heat, the heat that cooks your food. with rocks there are few water molecules, as most of the rock is amde up of mineral components, for examnple limestone is mainly Calcium Carbonate, which microwaves wont touch, even if there was water trapped within the rock (sometimes) i will only get to about 200 degrees C; if your luckly, which won't melt any rocks, in any case, magma ranges from 700 degrees C to 1500 degrees C; so your microwave would probbaly ignite beofre you got to that tempurature

Answer 2

Great question! But the answer is no; a rock needs far more heat than even the most powerful microwave can provide before it'll turn into lava. Plus - microwaves work by vibrating the water particles inside food, these are few & far between in rocks, so you'd probably get a very odd result.

On a tangent, I think that this experiment might have been tried on Brainiac; Science Abuse before.. but I'm not 100% sure of it.

Answer 3

Could not ever happen, your microwave doesnt EVEN COME CLOSE to being hot enough to melt the rock let alone turn it into lava. So no If you microwaved a rock for long enough you couldnt make it into lava

Answer 4

Basalt lavas melt at around 1200deg C at surface temperature and pressure. Water-rich granitic magmas melt at around 800-900. Even the lowest melting types, very rare Carbonatitites, need over 600 deg. Way beyond the capacity of a microwave!!

Experimental labs that work with lava studies usually melt rocks in an induction furnace.

Answer 5

Problem is, if it works you need to get a new microwave for every rock you melt as lava - much like egg - is notoriously difficult to get off the inside of a microwave.

Answer 6

No, the temperatures reached in the microwave would not be enough to melt the rock. But the microwave would probably catch fire if you left it on long enough, probably melting the plastics and the metal of the microwave but not the rock.

Answer 7

No. A microwave oven cannot generate nearly enough heat to melt most minerals, even if those minerals are capable of absorbing microwaves. However, if you use a porous rock that contains a lot of water, like shale, you might get the rock to explode.

Answer 8

Firstly, a microwave does not act like a conventional oven, that is, it excites molecules with microwaves to heat up the object in the microwave oven. Food gets cooked mainly by the heated up liquid in them and around them, explaining why the liquid boils so quickly and why you can't heat up a biscuit in the microwave unless it is soggy.

So most of our microwaves tend to have microwaves that excite molecules of liquid and gas. Solids molecules do not tend to get excited by the microwaves to get heated up. However, if there is a metal or graphite in the solid, the metal can absorb the microwaves and convert it into heat energy. Other solids, such as plastic, wood and ceramic, do not tend to have such properties for being heated up by microwaves.

So unless your rock has metal in it, it is unlikely that it would get heated up to a temperature beyond its melting point.

Answer 9

Absolutely ! A bunch of Japanese researchers used a normal microwave oven to melt quartz and that doesn't melt 'til about 1750 Centigrade !. They did however have a rather special pot inside their microwave oven to make it happen. They didn't say whether the oven was in a fit state to cook their tea afterwards though. My guess is it wasn't.

Answer 10

I imagine that the microwave would melt before the rock