I do live microwave filming as part of a stage show with Festival Of The Spoken Nerd. Our latest show is available on DVD, HD download and floppy disk: fotsn.com/ycpandvd
you don't need expensive carbon fibre tissue... with a match and some fibre of iron wool to self ignite the matches head in the closed running microwave, this will light the match and than the flame will boost to a bigger plasma cuz flames are plasma too... you will get a dense plasme ball, don't use a beaker, uae some thing like the beaker but with thiker walls because otherwise it will melt thruogh the beaker and the microwave ofen should be a robust one, because the dense plasmaball will over load it substantially
A note about using mesh screen vs. a perforated metal sheet as an attenuator: The woven nature of wire mesh results in what is effectively, a tiny resistor at each intersection of the wire mesh due to very small contact areas, and oxides on the surface of the wires. This results in ohmic heating and thus the hot spot as noted. Perforated metal doesn't have this problem.
Sir, you have more than 1M subscribers. You have decent income to buy microwaves everyday. How did you end up with a nasty piece of work (your wife) that dares to blame you over a cheap microwave? Is she a billionare? Or are you allowing her to abuse you because of sexist (antimen) laws regarding mariagee. Check out An Ear For Men channel. I would save you (not her) if we run into the aftermath of World War III. You will save modern science. She can blame Men and have bedtime with you once in a while. She Just doesn't worth you. She should be modest and loving. Not bitching over a cheap microwave.
Yeah I only just realised I didn't know/fully understand this. And now I do. From just a couple of minutes in a video which I thought only gonna be about a completely different topic :)
@@maxximumb also don't forget brady haran's many channels, other people in the math and physics side (vsauce (and related), physics girl, 3b1b) and primitive technology
Your wife's a champ. Love the "Oh." as a reaction to the shattered glass. :D At least you now have a separate microwave oven for experiments! ... At least I hope you got a new one for Lianne.
2:55 everything seems normal 3:00 wait a second... Did he lose hair during the process of making the video? 4:08 his hair reappeared...? 4:00 ahhhh nvm...
I have to say this is one of the best educational RUclips videos I've ever seen! (and I've seen a lot!) You touch on so many different topics, all of which are combined by a really cool theme, and the presentation of your explanations - the wording, the graphics, the humour, etc. - is sublime!
I studied photography, but you still managed to give me an a-ha moment when you said 'it's more like a pinhole camera' when you closed down the aperture down. I've never heard that simple explanation before!
11:25 "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh...." I thought that when you explained why cameras narrow the aperture! Loved the video, really fun to watch and interesting as always!
Explanation for haircut change. First universe: Long hair. Second universe: Short hair. This video is a glitch in multiverse. What other proof do you need??
WOOOOAAAAAHHH thank you so much, I knew that making the aperture smaller expands the plane of focus but I didn’t know how or why, and I never bothered to look it up, but you explained it so concisely and intuitively and now I see exactly why, awesome!!
If you watch the Slow mo CD in a microwave video and scroll down to TheScott10012's comment asking how it was done 1 year ago, you'll see I explained it. Just seemed nobody believed me. If I remember correctly I mentioned the method on other videos / comments too, but I'm far too lazy to go find them now.
There is a math trick worth trying to get better pictures through the mesh : fast Fourier transformations. I used the field of view/aperture trick a lot for taking pictures of animals thought a wire mesh in zoo, and although those mesh are a lot bigger you can have decent results. Seems like a DSLR with a wide aperture performs good enough for HD videos, but there might be a way get good results with less performant hardware. Recently while scanning a lot of old family photography, some of them where on a textured paper and needed to find a way to get rid of that pattern. That's when I discovered the marvels of fast Fourier transformations. I wonder how an FFT filter could improve a picture/film made through a mesh, but I believe it could be incredible.
0:42 Absolute perfect, there are no better words for what a human does with their life :) "I dont think theres an intuitive way to explain it " This from the guy with a channel that has a bunch of better and simpler descriptions of complex physical phenomena lol, you can do it
Metal is fine in the microwave. It’s not about metal, it’s about heat dissipation. If you put tin foil or a metal can in the microwave heat will build up in spots on the metal, make plasma, then arc. This is because of how thin the metal is and how quickly heat builds up in spots. If you leave a thicker, rolled steel fork in your food no problem (not cast iron too many holes and voids). No it will not break your microwave. The magnetron puts a fixed amount of energy into the faraday cage. If that energy is absorbed better by a piece of metal the magnetron doesn’t get hotter it’s output stays the same. Only 2 things will break your microwave. 1 putting something in the faraday cage that heats up to the point that it melts or breaks the faraday cage. 2 running the microwave empty, this causes all energy to build until the microwaves find imperfections in the faraday cage to escape through damaging the faraday cage. The safety mechanisms in the microwave prevent it from running if the latches or faraday cage are broken, therefore broken microwave.
I love the pinhole camera, in my room in the morning I can see outside without opening my curtains, theyre sun blocking (makes your room dark) so it basically mimics the box and pinhole idea
The trick with very open aperture and the micro oven grill at 8:50 is very useful at Zoos. Very bright full frame telephoto lenses, more than 85 mm with large aperture, larger than f/2.8 can disappear the cages. The longer focal length and bigger aperture deliver better results. It is a trick of optics.
I'm a prototype engineer/machinist for the Uni of Sydney and made a solution for this problem for one of the researchers. Basically we used a tuned length and diameter tube port into the microwave that allows physical access in and out while it's running while attenuating all the microwaves :)
Aah! I got unconciously excited when I saw the 4th power, but could not explain why. Didn't Matt mention in some video once that 4th powers are somewhat uncommon in physics?
"The reason waves cant fit through small holes is kind of tricky, i don't think there's an intuitive way it explain it" Here's one: If they're too big, they don't fit.
Just a note on the mesh.... It acts a collection of very small and very short waveguides... These waveguides do not support any modes at the microwave frequency of the oven and it will die out exponentially when it tries to pass through.... So basically what you have is a very large surface area High Pass filter that passes frequecies that is a few orders of magnitudes higher than that of the microwave... like visible light.... The reason why they dont make it to pass exactly at the microwave frequency is because the cavity where you put the food in acts as a resonant cavity for an oscillator (the magnetron being the active component). This resonator resonating frequency is a function of the cavity dimensions, but also the permitivity of the material inside of the cavity... Thus the frequency and deadspots and modes generated inside of this cavity is quite unpredictable to be exact, but will always fall inside of a range that is below the cutoff frequency of the mesh... :)
I love your wacky experiments and also the little behind the scenes mentions of how your wife is just... "... um ok hun, I love you but... please don't burn down the house... "
I'd say the easy way to explain wave unable to pass through the mesh, is like filtering water. the water that passes is way less. in the wave, most of the wave would end up hitting the metal mesh.
This video, revisiting it, gave me an interesting viola moment of how evanescent waves are related to diffraction which means how boundary conditions of Maxwell's equations are related to diffraction. Evanescent waves are the limit of the number of slits going to infinity and the size going to zero which is similar to the infinite series to represent a decaying exponential.
Just doing some rough calculations. Microwave ovens output between 600 W and ~1500 W depending on model. Radio frequency exposure limits vary around the world as to power density in millwatts per centimeter squared mW/cm^2 and as to exposure time. In the US, the general population limit is 1 mW/cm^2 averaged over a 30 minute period. So, let's say you have a 1000 W oven. Converting 1000 W to mW gives you 1,000,000 mW. Assuming you have all the 1000 W of energy is bouncing around the inside of the oven and is available at the enlarged hole in the mesh for the camera (it's probably not, but figuring worst case), you would need to attenuate the RF energy by 1,000,000 times to reduce the 1,000,000 mW down to 1 mW. That is a factor of 10 to the 6th power or an attenuation of 60 dB. That is a factor of 100 more than the 10 to the 4th power you've estimated. Since the hole is 1 cm in diameter, the area is 0.785 cm and the power density at the hole would be 1,000,000 mW x 10^-4 / 0.785 cm^2 = 127.3 mW/cm^2 using your estimate of a factor of 10 to the 4th power reduction from the 1 cm diameter hole. As stated, the power levels drop off exponentially with distance from the hole and there is a time averaging function over the 30 minutes so if one is only running the microwave oven for a few seconds here and there over the 30 minute period, that helps. All that said, would I try this if I had a spare microwave to play with, probably. But I'm a EE who works with radio waves and who has a spectrum analyzer and other test equipment to perform RF measurements to verify everything is safe. For the average person, as they say, your mileage may vary . . .
I super appreciate that you show things going wrong / breaking, as well as it working! It's affirming and informative to know that stuff breaks when you make and record these cool phenomena. :)
The mesh isolation method is applied in many other situations, beside microwave ovens. E.g. radio telescopes (telescopes, that take images with radio waves and not with visible light) are also meshed for the sake of weight reduction and stability. The difference is that radio telescopes reflect the light instead of isolating it.
I guess I see why the RUclips algorithm recommended Nile Red to me now. I watched half of this video, then had to leave home and didn’t finish it. The next day, I saw a video by Nile Red on the home tab in the RUclips app that looked interesting so I watched it and really liked his channel. Then I came back to finish this and for a second, I thought it was a huge coincidence, but then I realized that RUclips probably noticed a high correlation between watching this video and watching his channel. Kind of interesting.
I seem to remember when you first filmed something in a microwave and wouldn't say how you did it, then Cody showed how it worked. I mean, nothing against you, I like your content, but I gotta have the most respect for Cody because he basically shows us everything always.
The thickness of the holes matter. You could have a large hole that attenuates a lot if you mounted a flange and metal pipe inside of a bigger hole. Great for filming or, if you use a couple, flowing reactants in and products out.
I'm glad you mentioned Cody's lab. I was thinking the exact same thing at the same time. By the way I found your Channel few days ago and have been watching most of your videos. Really like them
I'm going to be one of those wives who just lets her husband do crazy experiments. My boyfriend and I once measured the height of our 16th floor balcony with a piece of string just so he could figure out the speed at which a leaf he dropped fell. 🤣
01:49 You can put metal in a microwave and it does not break it IF the shape of it allows it. If you for example put aluminum foil in the microwave that has an uneven surface like crumpled up foil it will light up with sparks. Mesh will do the same or it will light up and melt depending how intense (wattage) the microwave radiation is. On rough metal surfaces the sparks are created because the microwave energy creates electrical potentials and the sparks even out the charge. If you put a steel ball inside a microwave it will only get hot unless you heat it up too much then it will start to glow and might destroy or damage the turning tray. If you had something better than a normal microwave and some nitrogen as well as a something "fire resistant" you could make a lamp out of it, but it might deform because of the heat. You would also need a bowl that lets microwave through because the nitrogen is heavier than air and it would stay in the bowl unless there is wind. 02:25 There is a reason for that mesh in the door only having rounded holes. It's because of the electricity=heat buildup (potential difference=charge flow="friction"=heat) that would otherwise build up.
Your wife is the best wife ever. Lmao the text: Fixable? *shows pic of shattered glass* Oh. Lmao. Does she have a twin with the same personality?? If so...tell her I said marry me.
Honestly though, I started out with numberphile which led to Matt and to periodic videos, Matt led me here while periodic videos took me to NileRed and from there to CodysLab and now the branches are connecting!
I believe that the heating happens on corners and edges, where there is an abrupt change, and a cavity or resonance set up, plus the entire metal is acting like an antenna, and all the energy it picks up tries to concentrate on the small places and reradiate. Where the corner of your screen melted into the glass, you were likely actually creating a resonant chamber between your mesh and the mesh in the door, and it was concentrating energy there. Also notice how the door mesh, vent mesh and interior light mesh also all use round holes rather than slots anything. I wouldn't be surprised if this reduces the heating of the metal. I suspect that if you took your screen, preformed it over a ball or something on the table to get smooth curves tapered into flat edges to blend in, and then taped it to the flat end wall so that the edges were in contact with and blended smoothly into the wall, and everything was smooth, that it would heat much less. If you wanted to put a camera inside, you would probably need to basically actually make a new end wall matching the edge radii, so that you didn't get any blind corners or loose edges. The problem would be that the inner glass would prevent you from sealing it to the door mesh, so you would have a lot of energy get behind the wall to the camera, and probably melt the edge. Since you already have a busted microwave, you might be able to replace the punched round hole screen with the fiber screen to get more light through and better images, or just cut a section out and attach the screen over it. You might still run into problems with edges, or with the "sharpness" of the square woven mesh itself. If you cut the mesh large enough to get pinched between the door gasket and the face of the door frame you would be able to eliminate the most edges to heat up. If the square mesh heats up, you could also take some thin sheet metal and drill a pattern of larger holes in it, possibly even with tiny holes in the diamonds between the larger holes to get as much light as possible. That sounds like a job for someone with a laser cutter, or cnc machines, maybe another collaboration? Lol You could also buy pre punched sheet from suppliers like Mcnichols.com Imagine replacing the front, top, and end with mesh and being able to get multiple angles and good lighting!
I'm pretty sure you can use Fourier transformation, then filter the repeating pattern that the mesh makes in your image and restore the pixels in between them. Then reverse Fourier transform it all back into an image and you get a clean view without the mesh.
I do live microwave filming as part of a stage show with Festival Of The Spoken Nerd. Our latest show is available on DVD, HD download and floppy disk: fotsn.com/ycpandvd
You can't polish a Nerd!
Luckily The video on codys lab is still up or had been put up again
ruclips.net/video/KTdjHMWD_t8/видео.html
Did the math... thats around 42kg worth of floppy disks.
you don't need expensive carbon fibre tissue... with a match and some fibre of iron wool to self ignite the matches head in the closed running microwave, this will light the match and than the flame will boost to a bigger plasma cuz flames are plasma too... you will get a dense plasme ball, don't use a beaker, uae some thing like the beaker but with thiker walls because otherwise it will melt thruogh the beaker and the microwave ofen should be a robust one, because the dense plasmaball will over load it substantially
@@JoseAlbarracin10 You might not be able to polish a nerd, but Steve's new haircut smartens him up a lot.
A note about using mesh screen vs. a perforated metal sheet as an attenuator: The woven nature of wire mesh results in what is effectively, a tiny resistor at each intersection of the wire mesh due to very small contact areas, and oxides on the surface of the wires. This results in ohmic heating and thus the hot spot as noted. Perforated metal doesn't have this problem.
Sir, you have more than 1M subscribers. You have decent income to buy microwaves everyday.
How did you end up with a nasty piece of work (your wife) that dares to blame you over a cheap microwave?
Is she a billionare? Or are you allowing her to abuse you because of sexist (antimen) laws regarding mariagee.
Check out An Ear For Men channel. I would save you (not her) if we run into the aftermath of World War III. You will save modern science. She can blame Men and have bedtime with you once in a while. She Just doesn't worth you. She should be modest and loving. Not bitching over a cheap microwave.
Honestly the screenshot of the chat is all I want in a relationship or in life in general
Agreed
I feel you
what?!
True
I am 100% with you on that. My ex-wife didn't appreciate my curiosity, unfortunately. 😔
- fixable?
(image of broken glass)
- *Oh*
Easily. All it takes is... erm... uhhh... a time... machine...?
Yeah, dude... We all saw the video.
Turns out that my remade video is available; at least for the time being.
Cody'sLab can you send me some mercury
All my favourite youtubers are bunching up... nice.
i remember cody when saw this video title, and he is here!
I've seen tons of your videos but I can't remember this one. Can you (or anyone else) please tell me what that one was?
Link?
This is the best explanation of a camera aperture I have ever seen!
I had so many classes about this in school but never truly understood it. This really blew my mind.
Yeah I only just realised I didn't know/fully understand this. And now I do. From just a couple of minutes in a video which I thought only gonna be about a completely different topic :)
I've built a digital camera but still had my mind blown with the aperture method. So cool!
You built a DSLR? How?
@@kutsen39 with his hands
Steve Mould, Nile red and Codyslab. 3 of the best channels on youtube
Don't forget Mark Rober, Big Clive, Smarter Every Day and Tom Scott.
@@maxximumb And This Old Tony, AvE and Scott Manley
@@maxximumb also don't forget brady haran's many channels, other people in the math and physics side (vsauce (and related), physics girl, 3b1b) and primitive technology
Also Captain Disillusion, ElectroBOOM, and Technology Connections :)
The Thought Emporium, Styropyro anyone?
Your wife's a champ. Love the "Oh." as a reaction to the shattered glass. :D At least you now have a separate microwave oven for experiments! ... At least I hope you got a new one for Lianne.
What a fascinating way to explain how aperture works.. anyone who makes video should watch this.
A reason why i dont Like this comment : 69 likes
2:55 everything seems normal
3:00 wait a second... Did he lose hair during the process of making the video?
4:08 his hair reappeared...?
4:00 ahhhh nvm...
Either he is dome type of alien or he is aging forwards and back very fast
Radiation ☢️ 😂
I've found that physicists are very good at explaining how exactly things did go wrong, with no ability to predict them beforehand
He is the only one capable of cutting and uncutting his hair in the same video..... a true god of science
2:58 before shaving
2:59 after shaving
Thats the effect of Microwave
it turn you into Time Machine
Going to say “Wave dynamics!” whenever I need a haircut and a shave.
2:55 instant haircut :)
To and fro buddy, to and fro.
@@NiaziMujahidKhan and 9:30
@@theinconsistentpark9060 And 4:16 and 5:25 😁😁😁
He grows his hair in the first 20 seconds
@@micoromico He's killing it!
2:49 that final "oh" it's poetry ahahah Lianne is an angel
I have to say this is one of the best educational RUclips videos I've ever seen! (and I've seen a lot!) You touch on so many different topics, all of which are combined by a really cool theme, and the presentation of your explanations - the wording, the graphics, the humour, etc. - is sublime!
Hey thanks! That really means a lot.
I studied photography, but you still managed to give me an a-ha moment when you said 'it's more like a pinhole camera' when you closed down the aperture down. I've never heard that simple explanation before!
The continuity on this vid hurts my brain 😂 good work as always though 👍
11:25 "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh...." I thought that when you explained why cameras narrow the aperture! Loved the video, really fun to watch and interesting as always!
Explanation for haircut change.
First universe: Long hair.
Second universe: Short hair.
This video is a glitch in multiverse.
What other proof do you need??
WOOOOAAAAAHHH thank you so much, I knew that making the aperture smaller expands the plane of focus but I didn’t know how or why, and I never bothered to look it up, but you explained it so concisely and intuitively and now I see exactly why, awesome!!
Steve Mould, you are freaking awesome.
Agree 100^4%
Who remembers the RUclips channel, "Can I microwave this?" This video is far superior
After more years I'd like to admit of photography i finally understand basics of optics.
NileRed mentioned in a Steve Mould video??? Woah
I just came here from the NileRed video he mentioned, in which Steve was mentioned 😆
I don't know how I got pointed to your channel but I like it a lot. I love how you don't dumb things down and explain it step by step.
The secret techniques have been released to us plebeians.
If you watch the Slow mo CD in a microwave video and scroll down to TheScott10012's comment asking how it was done 1 year ago, you'll see I explained it. Just seemed nobody believed me. If I remember correctly I mentioned the method on other videos / comments too, but I'm far too lazy to go find them now.
There is a math trick worth trying to get better pictures through the mesh : fast Fourier transformations.
I used the field of view/aperture trick a lot for taking pictures of animals thought a wire mesh in zoo, and although those mesh are a lot bigger you can have decent results.
Seems like a DSLR with a wide aperture performs good enough for HD videos, but there might be a way get good results with less performant hardware.
Recently while scanning a lot of old family photography, some of them where on a textured paper and needed to find a way to get rid of that pattern. That's when I discovered the marvels of fast Fourier transformations.
I wonder how an FFT filter could improve a picture/film made through a mesh, but I believe it could be incredible.
That "oh" was priceless 🤣😂🤣😂🤣
Time Travel confirmed: Steve turns 8 years younger at 0:16 :O
and the older again at 2:58
Proving you can polish a nerd, even if the effects only have a short half life.
Of course, phone+microwave=time travel
@@scudlee Hououin Kyouma is BACK!!!!
I wonder when did he time travelled to steal Anthony Hopkins eyes
0:17 that's the fastest I've seen hair grow. Steve Mould hiding hair growth techniques from the general population.
It goes back short later on !!
0:42 Absolute perfect, there are no better words for what a human does with their life :)
"I dont think theres an intuitive way to explain it " This from the guy with a channel that has a bunch of better and simpler descriptions of complex physical phenomena lol, you can do it
Oh I should have thought of that! That's what I do to take photos through a fence in a zoo or something.
The face you're pulling when you freeze for the warning made me actually lol in real life. I love a good half-eye pic.
Metal is fine in the microwave. It’s not about metal, it’s about heat dissipation. If you put tin foil or a metal can in the microwave heat will build up in spots on the metal, make plasma, then arc. This is because of how thin the metal is and how quickly heat builds up in spots.
If you leave a thicker, rolled steel fork in your food no problem (not cast iron too many holes and voids). No it will not break your microwave. The magnetron puts a fixed amount of energy into the faraday cage. If that energy is absorbed better by a piece of metal the magnetron doesn’t get hotter it’s output stays the same.
Only 2 things will break your microwave.
1 putting something in the faraday cage that heats up to the point that it melts or breaks the faraday cage.
2 running the microwave empty, this causes all energy to build until the microwaves find imperfections in the faraday cage to escape through damaging the faraday cage.
The safety mechanisms in the microwave prevent it from running if the latches or faraday cage are broken, therefore broken microwave.
I love the pinhole camera, in my room in the morning I can see outside without opening my curtains, theyre sun blocking (makes your room dark) so it basically mimics the box and pinhole idea
The trick with very open aperture and the micro oven grill at 8:50 is very useful at Zoos.
Very bright full frame telephoto lenses, more than 85 mm with large aperture, larger than f/2.8 can disappear the cages. The longer focal length and bigger aperture deliver better results. It is a trick of optics.
I never thought I'd learn so much about cameras when I started this video. Very intuitive explanations.
I'm a prototype engineer/machinist for the Uni of Sydney and made a solution for this problem for one of the researchers. Basically we used a tuned length and diameter tube port into the microwave that allows physical access in and out while it's running while attenuating all the microwaves :)
Steve, I could watch you for hours! Love your style and explaining method! Keep the videos comin'!
7:11 this whole segment about the pin-hole projector and the camera lens was beautiful.
Stumbled upon your channel. Glad I found it. You’re a good teacher. Your method is very fluid. Good job. Subscribed.
thanks for the awesome explanation of aperture! I knew what it was used for, but now I know why it works and will be able to remember it a lot better.
The waves you describe as exponentially decaying over the mesh are called evanescent waves ;)
Tips hat
Isn't that a band
I'm sure Matt Parker would be happy to see that 4th power at 3:46!
Aah! I got unconciously excited when I saw the 4th power, but could not explain why. Didn't Matt mention in some video once that 4th powers are somewhat uncommon in physics?
"The reason waves cant fit through small holes is kind of tricky, i don't think there's an intuitive way it explain it" Here's one: If they're too big, they don't fit.
Just a note on the mesh.... It acts a collection of very small and very short waveguides... These waveguides do not support any modes at the microwave frequency of the oven and it will die out exponentially when it tries to pass through.... So basically what you have is a very large surface area High Pass filter that passes frequecies that is a few orders of magnitudes higher than that of the microwave... like visible light.... The reason why they dont make it to pass exactly at the microwave frequency is because the cavity where you put the food in acts as a resonant cavity for an oscillator (the magnetron being the active component). This resonator resonating frequency is a function of the cavity dimensions, but also the permitivity of the material inside of the cavity... Thus the frequency and deadspots and modes generated inside of this cavity is quite unpredictable to be exact, but will always fall inside of a range that is below the cutoff frequency of the mesh... :)
3:00 min into the video and... voilà!!! Magical hair cut happens!
7:48 goddamnit you just summarised two whole chapter in my physics book when I was in 8th grade. Why were my physics teachers so bad??!
0:17 #MarriageGoals
Also, I like how all the Tubers doing cool stuff seem to always wind up networked within their category of cool stuff.
Steve's hair hates continuity.
Can you also introduce magnetic influences inside the microwave for your plasma videos? Such as controlling the spin of the plasma?
I love your wacky experiments and also the little behind the scenes mentions of how your wife is just... "... um ok hun, I love you but... please don't burn down the house... "
His hair changed out of no where, had to go back to make sure i wasnt high or sum 💀
lol same here
hahahah same
I had to check cos I'm high 😅
In years I knew about the depths of field but just didn’t bother understanding how it works , you’ve just explained it so brilliantly easy
Thanks, I can now film myself from inside a toaster whilst it’s in the bath.
The hair continuity in this video is amazing :)
The hoodie and it's hood over his left shoulder is the only constant!
I'd say the easy way to explain wave unable to pass through the mesh, is like filtering water. the water that passes is way less. in the wave, most of the wave would end up hitting the metal mesh.
This video, revisiting it, gave me an interesting viola moment of how evanescent waves are related to diffraction which means how boundary conditions of Maxwell's equations are related to diffraction. Evanescent waves are the limit of the number of slits going to infinity and the size going to zero which is similar to the infinite series to represent a decaying exponential.
Amazing videography technique @2:58 : "The Haircut Cut"
excellent, was waiting to find out how you did it. I suspected the pinhole trick, but never thought about the precision focus - so simple, it's great.
Just doing some rough calculations. Microwave ovens output between 600 W and ~1500 W depending on model. Radio frequency exposure limits vary around the world as to power density in millwatts per centimeter squared mW/cm^2 and as to exposure time. In the US, the general population limit is 1 mW/cm^2 averaged over a 30 minute period.
So, let's say you have a 1000 W oven. Converting 1000 W to mW gives you 1,000,000 mW. Assuming you have all the 1000 W of energy is bouncing around the inside of the oven and is available at the enlarged hole in the mesh for the camera (it's probably not, but figuring worst case), you would need to attenuate the RF energy by 1,000,000 times to reduce the 1,000,000 mW down to 1 mW. That is a factor of 10 to the 6th power or an attenuation of 60 dB. That is a factor of 100 more than the 10 to the 4th power you've estimated.
Since the hole is 1 cm in diameter, the area is 0.785 cm and the power density at the hole would be 1,000,000 mW x 10^-4 / 0.785 cm^2 = 127.3 mW/cm^2 using your estimate of a factor of 10 to the 4th power reduction from the 1 cm diameter hole.
As stated, the power levels drop off exponentially with distance from the hole and there is a time averaging function over the 30 minutes so if one is only running the microwave oven for a few seconds here and there over the 30 minute period, that helps.
All that said, would I try this if I had a spare microwave to play with, probably. But I'm a EE who works with radio waves and who has a spectrum analyzer and other test equipment to perform RF measurements to verify everything is safe. For the average person, as they say, your mileage may vary . . .
I super appreciate that you show things going wrong / breaking, as well as it working! It's affirming and informative to know that stuff breaks when you make and record these cool phenomena. :)
So a microwave can melt glass in 2 second but my hot pocket is still cold after 2 minutes
thumbs up for slow mo guys research
@4:06 that’s maths calculation must have taken an age with the amount of hair he grew
And finally I understand how pinhole cameras work! Your explanation and graphic made it super simple and easy to understand. Thank you! Thank you!
5:04 "For me, that's fine" -note crazy eyes of excitement...
I love your disclaimer in your British accent. Sounds more official than it would with my accent.
The mesh isolation method is applied in many other situations, beside microwave ovens. E.g. radio telescopes (telescopes, that take images with radio waves and not with visible light) are also meshed for the sake of weight reduction and stability. The difference is that radio telescopes reflect the light instead of isolating it.
I find disappearing a metal mesh with DSLR optics way more interesting than any boring plasma inside a microwave. Mind blowing.
@Steve I enjoy the way you edit your videos almost as much as the content.
Thanks!
I guess I see why the RUclips algorithm recommended Nile Red to me now. I watched half of this video, then had to leave home and didn’t finish it. The next day, I saw a video by Nile Red on the home tab in the RUclips app that looked interesting so I watched it and really liked his channel. Then I came back to finish this and for a second, I thought it was a huge coincidence, but then I realized that RUclips probably noticed a high correlation between watching this video and watching his channel. Kind of interesting.
"My wife is very supportive of my… *can't find the right noun*"
I seem to remember when you first filmed something in a microwave and wouldn't say how you did it, then Cody showed how it worked. I mean, nothing against you, I like your content, but I gotta have the most respect for Cody because he basically shows us everything always.
The thickness of the holes matter. You could have a large hole that attenuates a lot if you mounted a flange and metal pipe inside of a bigger hole. Great for filming or, if you use a couple, flowing reactants in and products out.
I'm glad you mentioned Cody's lab. I was thinking the exact same thing at the same time. By the way I found your Channel few days ago and have been watching most of your videos. Really like them
Steve Mould: Oh btw, here's the best crash course on camera aperture you'll ever watch.
I'm going to be one of those wives who just lets her husband do crazy experiments. My boyfriend and I once measured the height of our 16th floor balcony with a piece of string just so he could figure out the speed at which a leaf he dropped fell. 🤣
I used to have a studio there, very cool place, small world!
I love the progression from complicated to simple. Classic research.
01:49 You can put metal in a microwave and it does not break it IF the shape of it allows it. If you for example put aluminum foil in the microwave that has an uneven surface like crumpled up foil it will light up with sparks. Mesh will do the same or it will light up and melt depending how intense (wattage) the microwave radiation is. On rough metal surfaces the sparks are created because the microwave energy creates electrical potentials and the sparks even out the charge. If you put a steel ball inside a microwave it will only get hot unless you heat it up too much then it will start to glow and might destroy or damage the turning tray. If you had something better than a normal microwave and some nitrogen as well as a something "fire resistant" you could make a lamp out of it, but it might deform because of the heat. You would also need a bowl that lets microwave through because the nitrogen is heavier than air and it would stay in the bowl unless there is wind.
02:25 There is a reason for that mesh in the door only having rounded holes. It's because of the electricity=heat buildup (potential difference=charge flow="friction"=heat) that would otherwise build up.
Being so nice to Cody after he threw that shade at you in the original video. Peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
your explanation of a camera obscura is perfect! it's a strange concept to try to put into words.
I love how Steve's hair and beard change length several times throughout the video
Your wife is the best wife ever. Lmao the text:
Fixable?
*shows pic of shattered glass*
Oh.
Lmao. Does she have a twin with the same personality?? If so...tell her I said marry me.
You’re weird, dude
Beautiful plasma capture, well done!
Your video has peaked my interest. Subscribed!
I have been waiting 2 years for this almost
I love when my fave RUclipsrs cross-pollinate through collabs and shoutouts :)
Honestly though, I started out with numberphile which led to Matt and to periodic videos, Matt led me here while periodic videos took me to NileRed and from there to CodysLab and now the branches are connecting!
I'm so impressed by you. Steve Mould for president.
I literally busted up laughing at 0:41, that was absolutely hilarious!
Amazing how much he changes looks during each cut
i recommend investing in a sturdy tinfoil hat and codpiece for microwave experiments
Always wondered what the science behind that mesh was, thanks!
I believe that the heating happens on corners and edges, where there is an abrupt change, and a cavity or resonance set up, plus the entire metal is acting like an antenna, and all the energy it picks up tries to concentrate on the small places and reradiate.
Where the corner of your screen melted into the glass, you were likely actually creating a resonant chamber between your mesh and the mesh in the door, and it was concentrating energy there.
Also notice how the door mesh, vent mesh and interior light mesh also all use round holes rather than slots anything.
I wouldn't be surprised if this reduces the heating of the metal.
I suspect that if you took your screen, preformed it over a ball or something on the table to get smooth curves tapered into flat edges to blend in, and then taped it to the flat end wall so that the edges were in contact with and blended smoothly into the wall, and everything was smooth, that it would heat much less.
If you wanted to put a camera inside, you would probably need to basically actually make a new end wall matching the edge radii, so that you didn't get any blind corners or loose edges.
The problem would be that the inner glass would prevent you from sealing it to the door mesh, so you would have a lot of energy get behind the wall to the camera, and probably melt the edge.
Since you already have a busted microwave, you might be able to replace the punched round hole screen with the fiber screen to get more light through and better images, or just cut a section out and attach the screen over it.
You might still run into problems with edges, or with the "sharpness" of the square woven mesh itself.
If you cut the mesh large enough to get pinched between the door gasket and the face of the door frame you would be able to eliminate the most edges to heat up.
If the square mesh heats up, you could also take some thin sheet metal and drill a pattern of larger holes in it, possibly even with tiny holes in the diamonds between the larger holes to get as much light as possible.
That sounds like a job for someone with a laser cutter, or cnc machines, maybe another collaboration? Lol
You could also buy pre punched sheet from suppliers like Mcnichols.com
Imagine replacing the front, top, and end with mesh and being able to get multiple angles and good lighting!
I'm pretty sure you can use Fourier transformation, then filter the repeating pattern that the mesh makes in your image and restore the pixels in between them. Then reverse Fourier transform it all back into an image and you get a clean view without the mesh.
Great video of plasma!
excellent work young man.