You’re told not to place anything metal in a microwave, Styrofoam, and even leftover French fries (unless you like the taste of dirty carpet), but what about grapes? Why not those?
Today we’re here to solve one of life’s greatest mysteries of why you shouldn’t place grapes in a microwave and what happens. Here’s the thing, I’ve always have heard not to do this as you’ll end up with a plasma fire grape ball. Is a microwave capable of such alchemy? Because going into the 4th state of matter, going beyond the gas, liquid and solid states, plasma is some serious business. Apparently nuking a grape can create an ionized gas fire ball (plasma), but still, no matter how awesome you think this is, don’t nuke the grapes. Ah-ah-ah! Step away from the grapes.
So in many YouTube videos, like the one shown below by CrazyRussianHacker, you’ll find people partially cutting grapes in half when performing this experiment (that we don’t recommend) at home. By leaving the skin slightly attached, you create a sort of antenna between the two halves of the grape to create a plasma ball when nuking it in the microwave.
The sweet insides of grapes have a ton of electrolytes, you know, the minerals that hold an electric charge –aka ions, which are molecules or atoms that are charged. Microwaves send out electromagnetic waves, and since the grape halves are semi-connected with their skin, a small current is made between the two halves. Swapping ions with each other like it’s no big deal. Oh, but it is.
With this huge current swapping back and forth of energy between the grape halves, just like anything that gets too hot, and 3000 degrees later, the grape skin path will eventually catch on fire or spark. This extreme heat is enough to ionize or electrically charge the air.
Once the grape skin path is broken, the electricity will have nowhere else to go and this little innocent grape will spark and all sorts of crazy nonsense. The flame or spark contains the ions from being swapped, absorbing the microwaves in an ionized atmosphere. Before you know it, a super bright plasma grape ball will be on your hands. Not so innocent anymore. Hello burnt microwave. It’s like a superhero gone villain.
Not only do you create an ionized gas to be on fire (plasma), but you create the gas, ozone. No, sorry to break the bad news, but you can’t stop global warming this way. Ozone is good and all when it comes to our atmosphere, as that’s where it should be. When it comes from microwaving a grape—it’s actually toxic and not very pleasant.
Besides all of that, it’s still always awesome to watch things catch on fire. It gets me every time.
Photo by: Screenshot | YouTube
