As luck would have it, a friend recently replaced their microwave and lent us their old 1100W microwave for sciencing, before proper disposal. Until now, the focus of our ongoing series on understanding the power output of a new 1250W microwave has been based on estimating the output of an 1100W microwave. In this installment we can see how accurate those estimates were.
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Tag Archives: water
The 1.676hp Microwave Saga: Part 3
In our ongoing series attempting to determine which power level on a new 1250W microwave is closest to 1100W, we now take a closer look at the oddities of power levels P1 and P2.
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The 1.676hp Microwave Saga: Part 2
While attempting to determine which power level on a new 1250W microwave corresponds to 1100W, some of the data collected was a bit odd. So we needed to take a closer look to see what was going on. Here we examine power levels P9 and P10.
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The 1.676hp Microwave Saga: Part 1
After over two decades of faithful service, our trusty 1100W microwave recently failed, giving us the opportunity to upgrade to a more modern 1250W microwave with an inverter. Unfortunately the extra power has caused some problems in estimating power levels and cook times, as most instructions are based on an 1100W model.
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Frosty, the car window
Sometimes frost on the *inside* surface of the car’s windows is a fact of life here at the primary testing facility. The defroster grid in the back window, while typically used to melt frost, the conditions were such that they became nucleation sites for the frost on the inside surface instead!
Consensus online is that this problem is related to excess moisture in the cabin, which considering our area has had somewhere between 157.5 – 226 ” this season (70″ difference? yup, that bugs me), tracked in snow and wet carpets is a likely culprit.
Iced Beverage Challenge: Brandy vs H2O
When consuming iced beverages, it casually seemed that ice would disappear at different rates depending on the beverage. What happens when we actually test this?
On the importance of searing steaks
Here at the primary testing facility, we recently acquired our first sous vide immersion circulator. Since this is a novel cooking technique for us we have many questions. In this post we seek to find out how important searing really is when cooking steaks?
Balls of Steel and Ice
Having contributed the a successful Kickstarter campaign that claimed to “harness the power of phase change to keep your beverages cold” last year, we were excited to put the product to the test. In this post we compare both versions of this new product to two other cooling mechanisms we have on hand.