Re: Microwave oven

[Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net>]

"Krzesniak, Michael F" wrote:
> 
> Good morning,
> 
> I was asked a question by a neighbor who is a high school teacher.  A
> colleague, put a D cell battery in her pocket before school.  It may have
> been for the recycling bin.  She turned on the microwave oven and felt the
> battery get hot.  Could the microwave oven cause the battery to get hot?

No.

I've been known to do some, er, alternative experimentation with
microwave ovens, including illuminating a neon gas filled glass
sculpture by suspending it over an upended microwave oven with the
door removed and using a couple of ovens with the doors removed to
set up a short hop data link (yes, an oven ended up mounded on my
ham radio tower :-)  Standing behind the oven (protect those eyes!)
one cannot feel the heating in the hand until it gets to within a
few inches of the doorless oven.  No conceivable amount of leakage
of a properly functioning oven could cause sensible heat in an
object in the pocket - particularly if she also didn't report
feeling a warm sensation in her skin in the near vicinity.  I've
done quite a few oven leakage surveys (offshoot of my volunteer
emergency management RSO activities.)  I've never seen an oven with
an intact door that leaked anywhere near the 5 mw/cm^2 federal
limit.  It's rare to even see the needle on the survey meter budge
off zero.

> I suggested that the battery may have leaked or maybe even keys, or
> something else, in her pocket created a short circuit.

Perhaps a highly suggestive personality expecting the "radiation" to
heat the battery?  Shorting even a mostly spent battery will cause
it to self-heat.  If there really was heating, that is the cause. 
I've had coins do that with a 9 volt lithium battery - it gets very
hot.  Hard to imagine how to do that with a D cell.

John

-- 
John De Armond
johngdSPAMNOT@bellsouth.net
http://personal.bellsouth.net/~johngd/
Neon John's Custom Neon
Cleveland, TN
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