When using your nuke for chemistry, it is useful to know where the standing waves in the oven re-enforce and cancel each other, so that the energy distribution for your reaction is in an optimal configuration. The below is a method for seeing what the energy patterns are in your nuke. The link has a quick time video of the pattern being generated.
Finding the hot spots in your microwave with fax paper.
If you have ever wondered why food can cook unevenly in the microwave, it is because of high and low points in the intensity of the microwave radiation field. As the waves bounce back and forth in the box, they interfere with each other. In some places they add up, and in other places they can subtract to zero intensity.
To visualize the hot and cold spots we do the following: Take a piece of blue foam insulation panel (1 inch thick Styrofoam) and cover it with a wet paper towel. Then we put a piece of thermal fax paper over this and place the whole combination inside the microwave oven. We cut the panel so it just covers the bottom.
When cooked for about 15 seconds, the water in the towel heats up where the microwave intensity is highest. The thermal paper changes color from white to black in these places. The following shows a top view of the panel after about 15 seconds of cooking: The image is about one foot wide
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Infinite Radiant Light - THKRA