hey everybody! today I want to give some love to everybody's favorite household appliance
the microwave oven. now for most people, these are simply a way to just heat up food in a hurry
and for that they're pretty decent. but for people like me, microwaves are so much more than that
microwaves are useful for a lot of cooler things than just cooking food
in fact, my parents microwave was probably my first platform for experimenting with electromagnetism
unfortunately that oven uh mysteriously died not long after they got it
the nice thing is that microwaves don't even have to be working to be useful to me. lethality
aside, the transformer and capacitor inside are great for high voltage projects like tesla coils
the glass tray and turntable motor can be used to make a simple laser show, and even the oven casing
itself is useful as a disposable blast chamber. now i've done a ton of projects using microwave parts
in this channel, but today i actually want to focus on the oven itself. and since this is my channel
i think there's some room to make some upgrades on this wonderful appliance as well
so yeah i hope you enjoy this video. oh yeah, before i go on i should warn you that all the
crazy stuff you're about to see was done completely for educational purposes. i mean
if you were to try any of this stuff at home, you'd probably die, so yeah please don't try this at home
alright so what kind of stuff can you even do with a microwave? well the obvious use is cooking stuff
but this isn't super exciting by itself and it's often slower than i'd like. and besides, you can do
this with an ordinary oven as well. but this isn't some ordinary oven, this is a science oven. this bad
boy cooks food with a huge electromagnetic field . i can use this field to check on the condition
of my low pressure gas tubes. has this plasma globe taken on air since the last time i hit it
with a tesla coil? a quick run in the microwave shows that it's still intact. but not for long
how about these cheap neon indicators i bought on ebay? are they any good?
i'll take that as a yes. microwaves are great for chemistry as well. in fact regular old microwave
ovens have been used in chemical synthesis for years in academic labs. now when it comes
to actually cooking food, there's still a lot left to be desired. i mean it's been over 70
years since the first microwave ovens, yet the new ones aren't any more powerful. what gives?
it turns out the people who make these things have been feeding us lives for years! so hear me out
what happens when you use the 50% setting for slow cooking? any self-respecting person would expect
the oven to simply run at half power, but check out that power draw. what actually happens is that the
oven runs at full power for an amount of time, then turns off for a while before repeating the cycle
sure it averages out given enough time, but it's still dirty. now admittedly that one's not that big
of a deal, but it does lead us to the light that's downright disgusting. what happens when you use the
hundred percent setting? most people don't question this setting because it's all they've ever known
but let's take a look at what that looks like in slow-mo. see how they flash like that?
yeah that's right, even at the 100% setting, the bulbs are only on half the time, and this is
because the oven is only producing microwaves half the time. what a scam! anybody who watches my videos
knows that half power just isn't gonna cut it for me. i think it's time for some upgrades. alright
so i've taken this thing apart to expose the circuitry inside. now i gotta say it, poking around
in a microwave is not for the inexperienced. when electronics hobbyists get killed by their
projects, it's almost always because they're messing around with microwave parts like these
anyway here's the reason why the oven's only on half the time. so this magnetron here, which
is actually the source of microwaves in the oven, is powered by feeding the output of this
high voltage transformer into this half wave voltage doubler circuit. now the very nature
of the circuit means that the magnetron is only going to be powered on half of the AC
cycle. now if the transformers in these things weren't ran so ridiculously close to saturation
you could just throw in another capacitor and diode to make the full wave doubler and call it a day
but you can't. so that means i have to sacrifice another microwave for the transformer
but before i do that, let's start with a quick control run because this is a science video after
all, sort of. i'm going to start by ripping this plastic covering off of the door. the metal grid
will still stop microwaves from escaping, but now i'll be able to see inside with my thermal camera.
i actually learned this thermal camera trick from the youtuber cyparagon
well he's not really a youtuber. i've just known him from various nerdy online groups over the
years, but he does have some cool vids on youtube regardless. so a cup of water heats by about 28
degrees celsius in a minute, which also suggests about 40% efficiency. now obviously this isn't
quite fast enough for my liking. i went ahead and unlocked full power mode here. i've added another
transformer, as well as some more diodes and capacitors to make the full wave doubler circuit
but wait! won't a microwave using double the power trip the breaker? well it's nothing a
little bit of copper wire duct tape can't fix. just kidding. we have appliance outlets for a reason
i was too lazy to use the original controls on the microwave so now i'm using this huge variac
to power it. now the nice thing is this actually allows me to control the power, as opposed to
just plugging that abomination directly into mains. a quick power up with neon bulbs shows
that the oven is indeed working. slow-mo video confirms that the oven is actually producing
microwaves on the full cycle. sure there's some ripple, but at least it's on the entire time now
a benefit of the new setup is that it bypasses all the safety mechanisms, which means the oven
door doesn't even have to be closed for it to operate. this is super convenient for the time
to need to irradiate large objects with kilowatts of microwaves. i was curious how a camera would
react inside my faraday cage with the open oven, so i stuck one of my old cameras in there with it
amazingly it actually survived this. now i should note that doing an experiment like this without
extensive shielding will lead to the fcc and local hams hunting you down, so uh, don't do that
let's go ahead and redo that water heating experiment with a full power microwave. the
original microwave drew a little under 1200 watts so i'm going to dial the power to about 2400
watts this time. over the course of a minute, the power draw actually increased to about 2800 watts
probably due to the toasty magnetron filament spitting off more electrons as it heated
the full power microwave heated the water way faster this time. 63 degrees celsius
in one minute. some rough calculations show that the efficiency was unchanged as well
giving about 40 percent efficiency. how about something a little more practical? check it out
an apple is heated to deliciousness in half the time it normally takes. talk about convenience. now
i know what you're thinking, what happens when i give this setup even more power? let's find out by
cooking this banana at four kilowatts. okay let's slowly crank up the power there. yeah seems good
oh come on
it clearly arced over in there, but i'm not even totally certain why. the extra power certainly
plays a role, but i think the geometry of the banana may be a culprit as well
i'm thinking it acts as a lens and or antenna that focuses microwaves to the tip
which causes dielectric breakdown from the huge electric field
maybe laying the banana on its side will prevent this from happening? well here goes nothing
hmm that doesn't sound very good
maybe i can just give it more power and it'll heat the banana along with the plasma
nope the magnetron is definitely dead now. wait why is it on fire? oh come on
pocket sand. unfortunately this puny little magnetron just couldn't hack the extra power
now it's not like i can just throw in a bigger magnetron either well not without shelling out
thousands of dollars. so why not use a bunch of smaller magnetrons? well the issue with that is
then you introduce a bunch of phase matching and even impedance matching issues. hmm wait what am i
thinking? why are we using this dinosaur technology when we could be using freaking lasers to cook
food? well there's a few reasons really. it takes a relatively huge amount of energy to cook food
due to water's high heat capacity, so a laser that could cook in a reasonable amount of time would
have to be ridiculously powerful and dangerous. luckily, ridiculously powerful lasers are what
i do best. in fact i already have on hand some of the scariest semiconductor modules on the planet
these are integrated laser diode arrays. they may not look like much, but each one is capable
of tens of thousands of times as much power as a laser pointer. it's honestly hard to convey just
how dangerous each one of these can be, and the hilarious thing is that i'm going to need to run
a bunch of them side by side at full power to pull off cooking with them. judging by the scratched out
part numbers and lack of documentation, i'm going to guess that i'm probably not supposed to have
these. so how am i going to turn these things into a laser oven? well honestly i'm not even sure yet
so i'm just going to start smashing things together until something works
all right so this is what the completed laser oven looks like. so i have my array of laser arrays here
on top and that's powered via this power supply that's fed through some drivers on the back
now I also added this water cooling loop here just because there's so much power going through
this thing that i simply couldn't get away with just some passive cooling there. the new
laser equipped oven draws about two kilowatts at full power, and about 700 watts of that makes it
out as laser light. in fact, that makes it the most powerful cw laser build i've shown on this channel
now in order to visualize this ridiculous power, i've stuck a mirror in there so you can see what
the beam looks like. i've actually had to turn down the power here because otherwise the beam
just washes out my camera's sensor. just to give you an idea on how ridiculous this oven is, the
highest danger rating a laser product can get is class IV, and that happens at half a watt of output
power. since the output on this thing is 700 watts, that means that it eclipses that rating by over
a thousand times. that means you probably won't be seeing these in stores anytime soon. alright
so the beam's flashy and all but how good is it at cooking food? let's start with a piece of toast
that smells so good! as you can tell
this laser oven is really more of a laser grill since the cooking is one-sided
but that's not really that big of a deal since i can just flip it over halfway through
well that looks interesting. i wonder what that tastes like? well here goes nothing
that's really good! wow it's like a carbon foam flavor. it's really unique. i mean you can't make
toast like this in a regular microwave. popping popcorn with a laser is one of my most requested
experiments to try on this channel. let's see how well the laser oven can pull it off
hmm that isn't doing a very good job. the beam must be too concentrated, since the surfaces of
the kernels are vaporizing off faster than the inside can be heated to the point of popping
let's see if i can fix that with a diffuser plate to spread out the beam
okay there it goes. some turntable action couldn't hurt as well
oh yeah look at that it's doing an awesome job now. that's way more interesting than the traditional
way of cooking popcorn. is laser popcorn as good as the microwave stuff? one way to find out wow
that was wow that is incredible. it has like a smoky flavor to it. yeah definitely beats microwave
definitely beats microwave. again with those like hints of the carbon foam flavor you know
one of my favorite flavors. it's funny because if i would have stuck with my phd program i would
have been working on inertial confinement fusion lasers by now, and yet here i am, cooking popcorn
with a laser oven. i guess i can do that as a youtuber as well since i actually have this
set of optical amplifiers from a government attempt at building a laser fusor. that's
for a different video though. i've had campfire s'mores and i've had microwave s'mores but i've
never had laser smores. perhaps the secret to the perfect s'mores by cooking it with laser beams ?
oh yeah check that out, it's making the chocolate nice and melty there. it looks like it's adding
a bit of crisp to it as well. yummy. all right let's add some marshmallows there huh it's kind
of hard to tell whether they're melting or if the white color is just reflecting off all the light
okay yeah it's definitely melting there wow. yeah i think that's ready to eat. man i hope
these things taste as good as they smell because wow, that is quite a fragrance. all right here we go
wow yet again i am very impressed. and one of the big themes about
this laser oven i'm finding is that nice that charred flavor you know
man i love carbon. it's a shame that you can't just like sell these things at the
store, because man you guys are missing out. now that i'm making campfire foods i can't
make s'mores without also giving hot dogs a try. one nice thing about the laser oven
is that leaving the door open won't jam nearby electronics or make the fcc angry
however my eyes would be destroyed in a fraction of a second if i took off my laser goggles
i probably should have spent more time designing a beam diffusing system but uh whatever
mmm that one's actually really good again with that like uh
it's like a char boiled flavor but i don't even need like a grill or whatever you use to do that
yeah there's this like really distinct aftertaste i mean it lasts a really long time and i mean
really a lot of things from this laser give an aftertaste that lasts a long time
how about a laser cooked egg? is it even cooking in there? it's hard to tell since the wood's burning a
lot but it might just be reflecting off all that light. i was kind of hoping for something like a
hard-boiled egg here but i don't know what's going on. yeah i don't think i'm gonna be eating this one
maybe i can do better with a different breakfast food? in all honesty
i'm usually too lazy to heat these things up, and just eat them straight out of the wrapper
fun fact, when i was a starving college student i found that pop-tarts were the highest amount
of energy i could buy for a dollar in my school's vending machines. breakfast of champions right here
it's a little um a little on the crispy side um yeah it's all right not used to my uh chocolate
being so toasty i guess. how about some double roasted cashews? i love the smell of roasted nuts
oh those give off a ton of smoke in there. it must be the oil or something. well here goes nothing
oh oh no oh oh that's terrible yeah that is one thing the laser oven can't do. all right
i've had enough appetizers today i think it's time for the main course. many people will argue
that nothing can beat the flavor of a microwave steak, but i think this laser oven can pull it
off. wow i just can't get over that incredible smoky fragrance. i better flip it over to make
sure it gets the other side. yeah that thing is being lasered to perfection. oh i almost forgot
i can't have a steak dinner without some laser caramelized onions. hmm looks like the onion
is a bit reflective to the blue laser light. i guess i can just leave it in there for a while
okay yeah i think that's good enough for now. wow check out that beautiful meal
now that is instagram worthy. let's give that steak a try first
all right might be a little on the uh might be a little overdone uh it's kind of hard to tell
you know not used to cooking with lasers but man it's it is a delicious flavor again with that uh
that like carbonization of the uh of the food there
well that was delicious i mean what should i try next. probably the caramelized onion there
mmm nice and sweet. you know i didn't get any char on that piece let's try uh let's try this piece
um that that's amazing wow i almost forgot about my texas toast
that's so good. man i love the future. all right i am stuffed now, so i figured this would be a good time
to go over some of the pros and cons of my laser oven. so uh the pros right. i mean the biggest
one is it's a laser oven. i mean cooking food with lasers is automatically cool. it also has a good
uh has a good way of like adding a smoky flavor to things. sometimes that can be a problem i mean
a lot of has to come down with the oven likes to cook uh like put most of the energy in like
the first few millimeters of the surface of the food you're cooking so that can be problematic
so that's why it like charred absolutely everything you put inside of it. i mean if
i were to use like red or ir lasers for this like near ir then it would have probably done a better
job at cooking food more uniformly and having a better diffuser plate in there would have probably
helped too but uh so i mean this was just like there could be improvements on it obviously but
i i feel like you could do a laser oven that would cook more uniformly and actually be
like you know comparable to a microwave so maybe i'll make another oven with uh with red lasers
or maybe i'll just make a mega microwave with a giant magnetron and do it that way. so yeah it was
an interesting experiment and this was probably one of the most requested things to do in my
channel, at least cook food with lasers. so yeah i'm glad i did it. oh yeah one more thing before i go
i decided to make a shorts channel since all the cool people are doing it
if you like bite-sized science demos in a vertical format then you'll probably
like the insanity that i'll be posting there. i'll be sure to put a link in the description
well that's about all i have for you today so until the next time stay safe and happy lazing