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From: billb@tektronix.UUCP (Bill Baker)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Yet more on ZAP!
Message-ID: <4696@tektronix.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 01:35:54 EST
Article-I.D.: tektroni.4696
Posted: Mon Jan  7 01:35:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Jan-85 05:43:37 EST
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 23

This discussion about terms for "microwaving" is most interesting. However
as a professional spectroscopist and amateur etymologist, let me give the
*correct* answer: NUKE IT! While the term 'irradiate it' is technically
correct, it is rather clinical and uninteresting. The term NUKE has some
emotional oomph, but it is, in a scientific sense, correct and heuristic.
 
The microwaves are absorbed by the food resulting in the excitation of the
vibrational degrees of freedom in the large molecules. The vibrations aree,
of course, nuclear motion and when they are irradiated with microwave radiation,the nuclei are collectively excited. So much so, in fact, that the molecules
(proteins, wet carbohydrates, & such) change their general conformation. This
is the very process of cooking. In the case of proteins, they become 'denatured'which is another way of saying that they have changed from their natural
molecular conformation. 

So nuke them suckers!

This is rather afar from cooking. I'll have to share my handed-down Kentucky
recipes with the net real soon.

					-Jere M. Marrs
					Tektronix, Inc. 50-324
					P.O. Box 500
					Beaverton, OR 97077
					I'm not Bill Baker.