If you peer through the grid, you might just be able to see the horizontal coolingįins on the magnetron (which look like a stack of parallel, horizontal Right hand side (just behind the lamp that illuminates the oven Magnetron, which is behind the perforated metal grid on the The microwaves are generated by a device called a This strong metal box stops harmful microwaves from escaping. Photo: The "cooking cavity" of a typical microwave oven. Microwaves heat food like the sun heats your face-by radiation. Microwave ovens are so quick and efficient because they channel heat energyĭirectly to the molecules (tiny particles) inside food. Do microwaves cook from the inside out?.Microwave ovens also save energy, because you can cook immediately without waiting for the oven to heat up to a high temperature first. This is why a microwave can cook a joint of meat roughly six times faster than a conventional oven. More evenly (loosely speaking, we sometimes say it cooks from the "inside out"-although Very slowly from the outside in, but a microwave oven uses tiny, When microwave ovens became popular in the 1970s, they lifted Of course, they had no electricity, which might have been Microwave, pressed a few buttons, and had a meal ready in a minute or Stone-Age friends, they could have just tossed everything in the Microwave ovens! Instead of sitting around smoky wood fires for hours on end, boiling up buffalo stew for their