Talk:Microwave

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Semi-protected edit request on 6 December 2023

Electromagnetic spectrum Safin RS (talk) 15:23, 6 December 2023 (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose#:~:text=Jagadish%20Chandra%20Bose%20was%20born,Bose%20and%20Bhagawan%20Chandra%20Bose.

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Liu1126 (talk) 16:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 January 2024

In the History section, can we have consistency when mentioning the early inventors nationalities? Either add the nationality of all mentioned or remove them. There is a German physicist, Indian physicist and a Russian physicist. No mention of Maxwell, Lodge and Rayleigh being British and Righi being an Italian physicist.

Bose was in fact British Indian and in modern terms he would be classed as Bagladeshi not Indian.

Thank you. K1200sbmw (talk) 19:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Geardona (talk to me?) 00:25, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 September 2024

Line: "The main effect of absorption of microwaves is to heat materials; the electromagnetic fields cause polar molecules to vibrate."

Heating is far from the "main effect" of microwaves, just one effect of many that microwaves have on molecules. Just because microwaves are most well known in the public conscience in the form of microwave ovens does not make this the most important thing. Further, microwaves cause a rotational excitation of molecules, not a vibrational one-- vibration is caused by IR.

Suggested: "Absorption of microwaves heats materials by transferring energy to the molecules, causing them to rotate. Orisgeinkras (talk) 01:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Needs a WP:RS for the rotational effect. Zefr (talk) 02:27, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

 Not done - this issue was addressed at Talk:Microwave oven, here. Zefr (talk) 16:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Zefr and Talk:Microwave oven, the word "rotate" would be misleading for readers. And heating (molecular motion) is clearly the main effect of microwaves, so I am okay with the sentence in question.

Should we maybe address Orisgeinkras's issue by adding an additional sentence such as: "The main way microwaves heat substances is by exciting the rotational energy levels of polar molecules"

Here's a citation: "It is the ... rotation of molecules which have characteristic frequencies so low that they lie in the microwave range and dominate microwave spectra" Townes, Schawlow (1975) Microwave Spectrometry, p.2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chetvorno (talk • contribs) 17:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

"ionizing radiation"

Hey y'all.

Microwaves are non-ionizing radiation, which means that microwave photons do not contain sufficient energy to ionize molecules or break chemical bonds, or cause DNA damage, as ionizing radiation such as x-rays or ultraviolet can.[24] The word "radiation" refers to energy radiating from a source and not to radioactivity. The main effect of absorption of microwaves is to heat materials; the electromagnetic fields cause polar molecules to vibrate. It has not been shown conclusively that microwaves (or other non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation) have significant adverse biological effects at low levels.

This whole segment needs to be completely reworked. It seems to be using a circular definition of ionizing radiation to mean "radiation that can cause cancer" rather than the correct definition, which is radiation that can remove electrons from atoms.

Long-wave UV radiation is not powerful enough to ionize atoms, and instead causes cancer by a different type of interaction with DNA, namely the formation of pyrimidine dimers. So it is both inaccurate to describe ultraviolet as ionizing radiation, and inaccurate to state that nonionizing radiation never causes cancer. EllieDellie (talk) 17:04, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm unclear on if MEDRS would apply here, so the following sources may not be considered reliable, but here are some citations for this statement:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2008.10.030

Microbiology with Diseases by Taxononomy by Robert Bauman, 4th edition, page 219 "Nonionizing radiation in the fork of ultraviolet (UV) light is also mutagenic because it causes adjacent pyrimidine bases to covalently bond to one another, forming pyrimidine dimers...The presence of dimers prevent hydrogen bonding with nucleotides in the complementary strand, distorts the sugar-phosphate backbone, and prevents proper replication and transcription."

ISBN-10: 0-321-81931-4 EllieDellie (talk) 17:16, 4 April 2026 (UTC)