Microwaves tend to come in 2 types, ones with a rotating plate and ones without. Assuming everything else is equal about a microwave does rotating the food assist with the reheating?

  • IGuessThisIsForNSFW@yiffit.net
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    3 months ago

    The Cheese Test (youtube link) is a great way to visualize this. If the food doesn’t rotate, you end up with hot and cold spots.

    (This was just the first video I could find of someone performing the test for people who hadn’t heard of it, I didn’t listen to the video, only confirm that that’s what they’re doing)

    • bluGill@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Only on microwaves that are designed to rotate food. there are designs that work without rotating but most people like to see their food go around so that is what most get.

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        If it doesn’t go round, how can I tell it’s working? Turns out, if the fan doesn’t work, I don’t beleive it’s working either. Listen there’s a set of rules for microwaves, ok?

    • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      The theory is that a rotating plate heats food evenly

      In practice what ends up happening is my ceramic bowl heats to 500 degrees while the contents somehow get colder??? Except for like, one carrot that is now glowing red

      • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Y’all need to try lowering the power setting on your microwave and heating your food a little longer.

        Also, if you’re heating something like lasagna where it’s almost impossible to properly heat up, cut it up into smaller slices so there’s less insulation. Still isn’t perfect, but at least it won’t be literally cold after 3 minutes.

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Do you put the dish in the center or on the edge?

        Ever since I switched to on the edge it’s noticeably improved, the bowl still gets hot but at least the food also gets kinda hot

        • trolololol@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Potatoes on edge, rice chicken and leaves in the middle

          Pork can be either, it just overheats and cools quickly, if it’s great enough it’s not going to dry. Otherwise do like chicken.

          Lasagna: slice it and make a ring

          If it’s a dish that’s all homogeneous like fried rice, make a donut

  • Chris@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    Yes, it does. Without the plate you will get hot and cold spots where the waves interact. If you don’t have a rotating plate you should be manually rotating the food, unless there’s some new tech I’m not aware of.

    • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Tray-less microwaves have a spinning metal “stirring fan” below a plastic floor you set your food upon to mix the bounce path the microwaves take. Since they expose fewer moving parts to the end user they are easier to clean and more resilient making them a good option for commercial / high volume settings.

      • bluGill@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        I haven’t seen one for sale in a few decads though. Where can I get one?

        • Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          The keyword is “flatbed”. They are well available. Mine is a noisy Whirlpool MWF 421 BL with a glass floor and door, coarse pulse width modulation fractional power (overheat and cool down alternating), and a grill that doesn’t work at the same time with the microwave (heat first, then brown). I’m looking for a quieter one with inverter for real fractional power.

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    A microwave works by bouncing microwaves around the interior. Since the shape of the container doesn’t change neither will the path that the bounced waves take. This can lead to hotspots in what you’re reheating.

    To mitigate this you have a few options:

    • move the food around in the container so that different parts pass through different hotspots over time (this is what a tray does)
    • interrupt the microwave path via a “stirrer fan” that sits below the microwave floor (this is what tray-less units use)

    Both approaches redistribute the hotspots to maximize even heating. The efficacy of either approach will come down to the specific design of either unit, but a tray-less unit can be easier to clean, and with fewer moving parts exposed to end users can be a good option for commercial/high user count settings.

    Each design accomplishes the same task of relatively even heating with few hotspots.

    • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Even in center it will work given that the time you are heating isn’t tiny.

        • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          But nothing really lies in the center. If you put a pie dead center in the microwave, 99,99% of it wouldn’t be in the center. Even the center of the turntable isn’t in the center of the microwave.

          • foggy@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            You’re missing the point.

            The issue isn’t just about the physical center of the plate or the microwave itself. The key point is how microwaves heat food unevenly. Microwaves create standing waves, which result in hot and cold spots. The center of the microwave tends to be one of the cold spots, regardless of where the turntable is.

            When the plate rotates, the food gets exposed to more areas where microwaves are stronger, leading to more even heating. However, if you place something directly in the center, it’s less likely to move through those stronger areas, which is why the center tends to be the least optimal spot for heating evenly.

            It’s not about whether 99% of the pie is centered—it’s about how the energy is distributed within the microwave.

            • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              I know what you’re trying to say but it just isn’t that simple.

              With my mother’s 40 year old microwave the center is the worst spot but mine is just different. How the energy is distributed will differ from device to device.

              You can’t know where the standing waves occur so you’ll just have to experiment but I’ll agree that the safest guess is to put your food slightly off centered on the rotating disc.

              • foggy@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                No you’re completely missing the point.

                It’s about how much of the volume the object can take up due to the plate spinning.

                If it’s perfectly centered, it only takes up its own volume. If it is off to the side it swoops around and takes up the volume that it takes up but on every quadrant of the plate as it rotates

                I don’t have any interest in discussing this with you any further

  • cmoney@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I had a microwave that moved the plate side to side which worked really well for heating anything solid, but heating liquids usually resulted in a mess.

    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Yes, commercial and maybe some premium microwaves can achieve the effect of the turntable by more hidden means.

      Though, I don’t know if they still make cheap microwaves without any hotspot mitigation whatsoever.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    https://youtu.be/OyTmJX_TC84

    Here’s a (trained electrical masters) putting metal in a microwave. I don’t remember if its this or another of his microwave videos in which he warms up the cardboard box and looks at it with a thermal camera.

    Or maybe it was a veritasium microwave plasma video where they show it i can’t recall

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I had a square one so without a rotating plate, IIRC it was the microwave emitter that rotated instead. If that is plausible, I sort of doubt it a little now.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    At least one brand now has a newer design that rotates the microwaves themselves to better distribute the energy. It’s a bit pricier than the standard models.

    • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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      3 months ago

      I only use the most expensive of microwaves that rotate the actual causal reality of the earth-itself around the microwave.