Microwave my head?

October 11, 2007 1:37 AM

How would it feel to stick your head in a microwave oven?

http://ask.metafilter.com/48657/ says your skin would feel warm but I was wondering if you could feel your brain being cooked from the inside. Just curious.

posted by denishowe to science & nature (16 comments total)

IANABS, but there's few-to-no sensory receptors in the brain (which is why people can't "feel" those crayons, pencils, nails etc when they're stuck inside) so I doubt you'd feel much anything in there as the brain cells and tissue died off.

Eyeballs popping, on the other hand. That's gotta hurt.
posted by rokusan at 2:09 AM on October 11, 2007

Don't be shy, just go for full body microwaving: previous AskMe.
posted by Iosephus at 2:20 AM on October 11, 2007

This is how a character kills himself in Infinite Jest, after having meticulously custom-built a door that would seal around his neck. It might just have been D Foster Wallace's flight of fancy, but his death came instantaneously from either explosion or implosion (can't recall which) rather than from brain-cooking.
posted by Flashman at 3:02 AM on October 11, 2007

Thanks for that link Iosephus. The target page links to a real eye-opener. Summary: microwaves are harmless unless you heat yourself to over 40C. Aye's probably enjoying it too much to post.
posted by denishowe at 3:18 AM on October 11, 2007

well, i think you can do damage way before the water starts to boil--a fever of 104 F can cause permanent brain damage if you have it too long, and water boils at 212 F. so it's probably not the greatest idea if you don't plan to spend the rest of your life grunting, drooling, and wearing diapers.
posted by thinkingwoman at 3:44 AM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Microwaves do not necessarily cook "from the inside out", particularly if you are made of stuff with lots of water. Having taken a class involving microwave wave guides as an undergraduate, I can report that when you put your hand in front of a microwave beam, you can feel it get warm, but it feels more like a concentrated heat lamp. Your brain really wouldn't feel anything, since there aren't many nerve endings in it and because the energy really wouldn't make it far past the surface.
posted by procrastination at 4:41 AM on October 11, 2007

IANAMS (microwave specialist)

I imagine the pain would be pretty minimal. Microwave ovens work by passing radiation through the food and exciting the molecules to the point of friction (dialectric heating). This process works best on liquid water, as it is an electric dipole; perfect for reaction to microwave radiation and dialectric heating.

That's why very moist foods cook much faster in a microwave oven than frozen or dry foods. Anyway, since the process is so incredibly effective on water-based liquids, live tissue that is rich is moisture would be particularly susceptible to extremely rapid permutations of dialectric heating called liquid superheating:

Liquids, when heated in a microwave oven in a container with a smooth surface, can superheat; that is, reach temperatures that are a few degrees Celsius above their normal boiling point without actually boiling. The boiling process can start explosively when the liquid is disturbed, such as when the operator grabs hold of the container to take it out of the oven, which can result in severe burns.
(source)

Now take into account the percentage of the human body comprised of water: "Different people have different percentages of their bodies made up of water. Babies have the most, being born at about 78%. By one year of age, that amount drops to about 65%. In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water" (source). So our bodies are hugely liquid in nature.

This should mean an incredible superheating in an incredibly short amount of time. Have you ever put a goldfish or an insect like a fly in the microwave? If so, you know that it takes only a few seconds seconds for them to literally burst from the liquid superheating and steam expansion in their bodies. Granted, a much larger body (or head!) would necessitate longer time for steam expansion to the point of explosion, but the effects of the superheating would be lethal in a very short amount of time, I should think.

In fact, the human brain itself is composed of mostly water: Skeletal muscle is 75% water and the whole brain is 77 to 78% (source). Now, since the whole body is largely water, it may take longer for the "inner" sections (brain) to be superheated, as the skin, outer muscle and blood "absorb" the heat first, but I don't think it would take very long at all for the inner brain tissue to heat to lethal levels, given it's mostly water state.

But these are all random conclusions I'm forming based on a few facts, and I could be way off base :)
posted by sprocket87 at 5:58 AM on October 11, 2007

sprocket, you're running around putting goldfish in microwaves??

I would think the brain-heating process would go something like warm skin/heat lamp sensation --> donotpassgo-gostraightto--> brain anyruism/death
posted by craven_morhead at 6:45 AM on October 11, 2007

I believe your ears, nose, lips, scalp etc would feel like they were blasted with heat. It would take a while for your brain to soak up enough energy to really heat up. Stick a big chunk of meat in the microwave, it will not cook on the inside first. Even something small like a pie will be cold in the middle and blasted on the outside.
posted by tomble at 7:21 AM on October 11, 2007

How would it feel to stick your head in a microwave oven?

Cramped -- or dead. If your microwave is like mine, you cannot actually operate it unless you close the door. Doing this would, of course, require removing your head from your body, in which case you would not feel anything any more.
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:35 AM on October 11, 2007

Like what Flashman said, James Incandenza kills himself in Infinite Jest this way, and his head explodes. Of course, this may be literary license, but David Foster Wallace is pretty intelligent and thorough about his research. Here are his two sons talking about him:


     'I didn't even think a microwave oven would go on unless the door was closed. What with microwaves oscillating all over, inside. I thought there was a refrigerator-light or Read-Only-tab-like device.'
     'You seem to be forgetting the technical ingenuity of the person we're talking about.'
     'And you were totally shocked and traumatized. He was asphyxiated, irradiated, and/or burnt.'
     "As we later reconstructed the scene, he'd used a wide-bit drill and small hacksaw to make a head-sizd hole in the oven door, then when he'd gotten his head in he'd carefully packed the extra space around his neck with wadded-up aluminum foil.'
     'Sounds kind of ad hoc and jerry-rigged and haphazard.'
     'Everybody's a critic. This wasn't an aesthetic endeavor'.
     '...'

     'Or have you, by example, say, ever like baked a potato in a microwave oven? Did you know you have to cut the potato open before you turn the oven on? Do you know why that is?'
     'Jesus.'
     'The B.P.D. field pathologist said the buildup of internal pressures would have ben almost instantaneous and equivalent in kg.s.cm. to over two sticks of TNT.'
     'Jesus Christ, Hallie.'

     'Himself didn't suffer, then. In the microwave.'
     'The B.P.D. field pathologist who drew the chalk lines around Himself's shoes on the floor said maybe ten seconds tops. He said the pressure build-up would have been almost instantaneous. Then he gestured at the kitchen walls. then he thew up. The field pathologist.'
posted by suedehead at 7:58 AM on October 11, 2007

sprocket87, I think you're conflating superheating with the normal increase in boiling point at increased pressures. They're two separate phenomena.

Superheating can occur in a coffee mug in a microwave as described - in those cases there is no associated increase in pressure, as the container is open to the atmosphere.

Heating water in a microwave (or otherwise) in a closed container is a different thing--the liquid water can get significantly (not just a few degrees, as with superheating) hotter than 100°C, depending on how strong the container is. As the water begins to boil, pressure increases, and with increased pressure, water remains liquid at temperatures higher than 100°C, regardless of whether or not the surface is smooth. Do it long enough, and eventually the pressure is too much for the vessel to contain, and it explodes. This is probably what's happening in your flies and goldfish.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:59 AM on October 11, 2007

David Foster Wallace is pretty intelligent and thorough about his research

Then why did he take the completely implausible urban myth about the toothbrushes-up-the-butt pics and pass it off as his own creation? That was the point I realized the whole thing was kind of a sham and put the book aside permanently.

Sorry for the tangent. Microwaving yourself would probably hurt a lot.
posted by drjimmy11 at 8:35 AM on October 11, 2007

The spin-aligning energy pulses that resonate with protons to give signals that are reconstructed into images in MRI scanners are in the microwave range, though longer than the wavelengths used in ovens. Warming of the brain and other tissues are discussed as a theoretical risk in the first chapter of most textbooks on MRI but no modern scanner will raise the tissue temperature even 1 degree F in a person with healthy blood flow.

The military Active Denial System also uses microwaves. It is tuned to produce the maximum effect on tissue; it heats the skin to temperatures that activate pain receptors. I imagine that placing your head in a microwave oven would have a similar effect, but less efficient because of the lower energies and different frequencies used.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:26 AM on October 11, 2007

David Foster Wallace is pretty intelligent and thorough about his research.

...or at least his readers would like to think that. Was Orin's plum job "turning on" the automatic sprinklers at BU's artificial turf-covered Nickerson Field a joke or just sloppy? (I found it very funny.)

drjimmy11, I don't think DFW is passing off the many urban legends referenced in Infinite Jest as his own creations. Many of the plot points -- the movie itself, ONAN, DMZ, Eric Clipperton, etc. -- are essentially urban legends, so the toothbrush and the hapless bricklayer fit right in.
posted by backupjesus at 11:37 AM on October 11, 2007

We had an old dinosaur microwave at my former workplace that would operate with the door open, as I found out. One day as I was microwaving lasagne on a paper plate, I opened the door and fidgeted with the wimpy paper plate for a bit, until I noticed my hand tingling in a pins-and-needles sort of way. I realized then that the thing was still on. My skin didn't warm up; it was just a very internal sensation of... energy, I guess. Certainly uncomfortable, like the electrical stimulation they use on muscles in physical therapy. I didn't leave it there long enough to feel any actual pain, though my hand felt Not Normal for a day- but that could have been all in my head.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:23 PM on October 11, 2007