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42 Comments
- Mookeh, on 07/30/2008, -2/+21My kitchen was turned into a science experiment the moment I started to cook.
- rrife, on 07/30/2008, -0/+17So 8 years ago I moved into my first home and decided to pick up some microwave popcorn to eat since I hadn't fully unpacked....this normally wouldn't have been a problem however I'd not eaten microwave popcorn in about 10 years and didn't think about the fact that the microwave in my new home was a 1800W one, so I just popped in the bag of popcorn, hit 20 minutes on the timer (seemed like that's how long it took to make when I was kid), and went up stairs to play some games on the computer while I waited for the microwave to beep. About 10 minutes into the cooking I heard a beep but it was from the smoke alarm, when I got down stairs and managed to navigate through the thick smoke to the microwave I found that the popcorn had turned into a green ball of plasma looking stuff inside the microwave. Bottom line: it destroyed the microwave, but looked pretty cool while it lasted.
- roddack, on 07/30/2008, -1/+12I thought it could be made with just three red mana.......
- frogman54, on 07/30/2008, -0/+6I left a fork inside a dish once and I do recall the resulting lightning to be ball-shaped. I didn't know I had created such phenomenon. Maybe I should have told somebody in he scientific community. Some lucky store owner would have been like, "MIT just ordered a thousand microwaves and 40 boxes of forks...weird."
- ChayD, on 07/30/2008, -0/+61.8KW?! That's a *serious* microwave
- akilleen, on 07/30/2008, -1/+7I think the Furby in the microwave is my favorite...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_lNfBZTz2xQ - headband, on 07/30/2008, -0/+5Littered across the Internet are dozens of home videos of people putting a lit match into their microwave oven, turning it on and waiting for the inevitable chaos to ensue: a spitting, sputtering ball of brilliant white fire that seems to hang magically in the air until it floats upward and scorches the hell out of the microwave ceiling.
Some of the mischievous miscreants responsible for turning their kitchens into science experiments claim to have recreated a mysterious natural phenomenon known as “ball lightning,” which resembles the fiery spheres created in the microwave and is thought to be the byproduct of lightning strikes. But are these glowing orbs created in an appliance normally reserved for reheating leftovers really the same thing as ball lightning?
Several scientists in the relatively small field of “ball-lightning-ology” say that it isn’t quite the same thing. “It’s not the same as the ball lightning that we are talking about,” says Antonio Pavão, a professor of chemistry at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil who has successfully created a ball lightning-like phenomenon in his lab.
Reports often describe naturally-occurring ball lightning as a luminescent white-blue or white-orange ball, which are, on average, about the size of a grapefruit. It can move through the air on its own for seconds and even minutes, bouncing off most things it touches until it either fades away or explodes. Sightings are reported most often during thunderstorms when lightning actively strikes the ground. Not to be taken lightly, ball lightning has reportedly even killed people.
But until recently scientists did not take the phenomenon very seriously, and some did not even think it existed at all. Several theories were floated around to explain the mechanism of ball lightning, but only one has gained ground in recent years. It was proposed by John Abrahamson and James Diniss, professors of chemical engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The inspiration for their theory were the glass-like globules of silicon, called fulgurites, found in the ground after lightning hits silicate-rich soil (silicates are compounds containing silicon and oxygen.) They proposed that, in addition to the formation of fulgurites, inconceivably small particles of pure silicon, smaller than 100 nanometers, were being vaporized and ejected out into the air during a lightning strike.
Once in the air, these silicon particles would begin to condense together and react with oxygen in the atmosphere, giving off heat and light and creating a fiery sphere of ball lightning.
A nice theory, but only in the last several years have scientists been able to verify it by creating something similar to ball lightning in the lab. For example, a group at Tel-Aviv University in Israel created a ball lightning-like effect by shooting microwaves at blocks of silicate. However, the effect only lasted for a scant 30 milliseconds once the microwaves were turned off.
More recently, Pavão’s research group in Brazil created a ball lightning-like effect that lasted anywhere from eight to ten seconds, which more closely mimics the behavior of the real thing. Pavão sent an electric current into a wafer of pure silicon, conditions strikingly similar to those of real lightning hitting the ground.
According to both Pavão and Abrahamson, the spectacle that you can create in your microwave oven is more like the Tel-Aviv University group’s experiment than actual ball lightning. Outside energy from the microwave is sustaining the fireball instead of internal chemical energy caused by reaction with the atmosphere. “The important difference is the lifetime of the balls,” says Pavão. “The natural phenomenon is different because there is no need for an additional source of energy and the lifetime is minutes.” - mikecurry, on 07/30/2008, -9/+14hahaha you said balls...
- Asrrin29, on 07/30/2008, -0/+4I am such a nerd for getting that -_-
- slifty, on 07/30/2008, -0/+4Popcorn doesn't even take 20 minutes to cook on a stove...
- traichea, on 07/30/2008, -0/+4That's *nothing*
My microwave does 1.21 gigawatts - mynameisjonas, on 07/30/2008, -0/+3i love to make grape plasma though, super easy and cool.
- IVIrMP3, on 07/30/2008, -0/+3Here's something from 3 years ago
http://jlnlabs.online.fr/plasma/gmr/index.htm - slifty, on 07/30/2008, -3/+6Pikachu's final smash sucks.
- deaddjembe, on 07/30/2008, -0/+3Cut a grape in half leaving the two halfs attached by the skin. Place cut side up in the microwave. Microwave for 20 seconds. Enjoy!
- npowel, on 07/30/2008, -0/+2Did you even read the page?
- galvo, on 07/30/2008, -1/+3Put a CD in a microwave. Good times.
- thefandango, on 07/30/2008, -1/+3You can also make plasma in your microwave with grapes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2izfWErXIAI - Maurina, on 07/30/2008, -4/+6Gee cool a frontpage article on Digg I wonder what this is abo-JESUS CHRIST IT'S MR. BABYMAN BURY BURY BURY BURY
- abdo, on 07/30/2008, -2/+4"Not to be taken lightly, ball lightning has reportedly even killed people."
Playing with your microwave is serious business - SneakyNinja, on 07/30/2008, -0/+2What no DnD references? How disappointing...
- tumbaba, on 07/30/2008, -0/+2“The important difference is the lifetime of the balls,” says Pavão.
Truer words were never spoken. - smiley2billion, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1Needs more pics.
- dhaugen, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1put a match standing up in the microwave and light the match, put a glass over the math and set the microwave for 30 seconds. or just look up microwave plasma on youtube
- SifooD, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1lolllll
- DrJG, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1I knew one student who set fire to the oven trying to make a sandwich and told everyone about it, quite proudly too.
This was before microwaves were ubiquitous - they were too new and expensive then for students. - mikecurry, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1hahaha you said Diarrhea!
- DrJG, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1I knew one student who set fire to the oven trying to make a sandwich. This was before microwaves were ubiquitous - they were too new and expensive then for students.
- Chirp08, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1Who cares, lets blow up some ***** marshmallows!
- booshack, on 07/30/2008, -2/+3Hey mike...
Diarrhea! - reparsed, on 07/30/2008, -0/+1I love the smell of microwaved CDs in the morning!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/reparsed/2716279027/ - Ch3mn3rd, on 07/30/2008, -0/+0I've done quite a bit of research on this subject actually. When you place something like a match in a microwave, you will observe this crazy phenomenon. Whether or not it is ball lightening remains to be seen. Scientists still know very little about ball lightening and know even less about why our microwaves can create these light shows. My personal theory is that the microwaves excite carbon in the smoke being released by the match and those atoms briefly produce a sort of low temperature plasma.
- PapaBoojum, on 07/30/2008, -1/+1I predict a rash of 'Darwinism-via-asploding-microwave-oven' videos on YouTube.
- RealmDown, on 07/30/2008, -3/+3Or a coffee cup with gold overlay
- Andrewx80, on 07/30/2008, -0/+0The Ball Liighting I once saw was during a lighting storm in new mexico and the glowing ball about 2' in diameter made a loud sizziling noize and moved along an electrical power line for about 1 minuet then disapeared.
- WyrmSlayer, on 07/30/2008, -2/+1Doesn't everyone?
- bokep, on 07/30/2008, -3/+2Next thing you know cops are running around with their ball-lightning guns to replace tasers.
- WyrmSlayer, on 07/30/2008, -2/+1Another MrBabyMan article hits the front page... someone call the media...
(What sort of stupid name is MrBabyMan anyways?) - Tribis, on 07/30/2008, -4/+2I hate MrBabyMan.
- krets, on 07/30/2008, -7/+5***** you! Two of my friends were killed microwaving Pop Tart wrappers!
- themdjunkie, on 07/30/2008, -8/+3***** you, two of my friends were killed by ball lightning
- iNezy13, on 07/30/2008, -12/+1buried because there've been SO MANY youtube videos of this for such a long time
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