Why doesn't a microwave kill insects?

Question

My microwave was full of ants so i decided to run it for a minute to kill them all off. To my surprise when i opened it a while later they were still running around as happy as ever, didnt even seem a little panicked. How come it heats up water to boiling in a minute but didnt cook these critters?

Answer 1

Think of a microwave more like a laser beam than a light globe. This beam bounces around inside the oven until it hits something that absorbs it. It does not bounce through every square inch of the oven, just some parts. This is why the food rotates to help distribute the energy evenly. To so some degree anyway, it is why you can get hold and cold patches in that meat pie.

Ants are small and I imagine able to notice it when getting cooked. When they do happen to walk into the path of the microwave, they quickly walk back out of it and may avoid that area next time, maybe not. Perhaps they can feel it where the microwave is bouncing of the oven wall and avoid it in the first place. Being such small creatures does increase the possibility that they are more receptive to smaller vibrations like microwaves, not sure though. Anyway, if you did place a microwave beam continuously on an ant it would cook. Most things would be able to handle a short brief does of microwave, but would have a limit.

Answer 2

Real answer here!

It's because the microwaves can't heat anything much closer to the inside conducting walls of the microwave than the wavelength of the microwaves ( ~ cm or so); and that's where the ants are. The electromagnetic field intensity at the surface of any good conductor exposed to an electromagnetic wave is zero.

Try putting the ants in a microwave safe bowl.

Answer 3

Water is excellent at absorbing microwave radiation, so it heats up ane eventually boils. Either:

1. The bugs didn't have enough water in them.
Because water is far better than other substances at absorbing microwaves, the bugs may not have gotten hot enough.

2. The bugs were too small.
The magnetron tube in your microwave emits microwaves at random. Because of this, heated foods sometimes have hot or cold spots. If there were only a few bugs, perhaps all of them escaped harm.

By the way, I am a physics nerd. While I believe this answer to be correct, I can't guarantee it.

Answer 4

The microwave radiation is not distributed equally. There are places in the oven where there is no radiation at all.
So maybe the ants are staying in those cold spots. Like when yo u try to fry them with a magnifying glass they always run away when they feel the heat.
Then again maybe objects need to have a minimum size to be affected by the microwave. Try putting a drop of water in there and see if it gets hot.

Answer 5

I guess they don't have enough water in their bodies to heat them up enough to kill them in a minute. Water is far better than most other substances at absorbing microwave radiation.

Experiment with longer times. Make sure the microwave is clean and dry so the microwaves aren't getting absorbed by something else. I'm sure they'll die eventually.

Answer 6

The wavelength of the microwaves is so long compared to the tiny bits of water in the ants bodies that they don't absorb any radiation.

Answer 7

a) microwaves heats fluids and ants dont have many fluids

b) microwaves would probable pass through the insects and create heat, which makes them angry actually, so they will probable be moving around a lot after you heat them

c) why are there ants in your microwave?

Answer 8

They don't have blood, per se. And microwaves only work by vibrating the water molecules, and insects don't have enough in their bodies.

Answer 9

CAN I DRY MY HAIR IN THE MICROWAVE?