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Here's a video of using a blow torch to heat up a bottle and then using a microwave to actually melt it, according to the experimenter the glass becomes an ionic conductor and absorbs the microwave energy.
Beer bottle melted in a microwave
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Feb 9, 2008 10:00 AM
Science |
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How long until we see examples of bongs made this way?
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Wearing goggles will not save your hands from getting shards of glass embedded in them. I'd say this guy needs a pair of elbow length asbestos gloves.
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But this looks like a good way for your facial skin to become an ionic absorber of molten hot projectile glass spewing out of a microwave.
On the list of things on this site with the the potential for something to go really really wrong, this one might be at the top of the list.
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I accidentally did this once melting paraffin in the microwave - I melted a hole in the side of a Pyrex measuring cup. No blow-torch needed.
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Now I gotta find me an old microwave and start doing dangerous microwave experiments with glass. This is just too cool to let go of.
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How 'bout melting metal? This guy melts metal for casting
in his nuke!:
http://home.c2i.net/metaphor/mvpage.html
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The "explosions" aren't nearly as violent as people suspect. Usually the cooling bottle goes "tink" and falls in pieces. Rarely a chip gets far enough to hit the inside of the oven.
If you dropped a beer bottle on the floor and it shattered, that "explosion" is far more violent.
And yes, sometimes a small bit of crap on the glass will trigger the melting process, no blowtorch needed.
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Isn't glass SiO2? I don't understand the 'ionic conductur' part, unless there're other compounds constituting the beer bottle glass.
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Bill, "tink" is just not going to cut it in our modern post Sept. 11th world. You have to say something like, "the energy released will propel these shards of glass twenty, maybe thirty millimeters to where they will conduct their deadly business!" Then we cut to your co-anchor who will tell us about a dog that had seventeen puppies.
In all seriousness, my glass blower friends all tell me that cuts are just part of the fun.
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