Scientists Finally Explain Why Microwave Grapes Emit Great Splashes of Plasma / Boing Boing

The mystery of the glorious fireball emitted by the grapes in the microwave (presented in my novel Little Brother) was solved thanks to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Hamza Khattak and Aaron Slepkov, researchers at Trent University, explain how they destroyed a dozen microwaves before determining that the grapes had the ideal size and enough moisture to create standing waves that amplify microwaves – do the same.

The document is offline on PNAS and Sci-Hub, which is strange, but it is well covered in Ars and Wired.

"The previous explanations rested on the idea that the grape was acting as an antenna and that an electric current was being generated through the" bridge of the skin "holding the two halves of a grape together", said co-author Pablo Bianucci of Concordia University in Montreal, who did the computer simulations for the study. This is the current conventional wisdom that generates plasma.

These new experiences show that it is not quite correct. The skin bridge is not necessary for the effect to occur.

On the contrary, "our interpretation is that the plasma is generated by an electromagnetic" hot spot "which is a purely (microwave) volume effect," Bianucci said. "Grapes have the right refractive index and the right size to" trap "microwaves, and the proximity of two of them leads to the creation of that hot spot between them."

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