Alpo Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Someone should know the answer to this puzzlement. I drink instant coffee. Yeah, boo hiss. Anyway. I take a pyrex measuring cup that holds a pint, and put, more or less, 14 ounces of water in it. I then nuke it for three minutes My coffee cup holds 11 ounces, so this works fine. When I take the cup out of the microwave, the water is, sometimes,bubbling, but the handle of the measuring cup is barely warm. Couple of weeks ago I let my coffee set until it was cold, so decided to nuke it and warm it up. At the last minute I stopped myself from putting it in for three minutes, because the cup was not full, and only did it for two. Burned the hell out of my fingers, on the handle, when I took it out. Thought that it was a combo of less coffee in the cup, and actual smaller cup. Today I did the same thing. So I only nuked it for one minute, and the eleven-ounce cup was full. Again I burned my fingers removing it, and burned my lips drinking it. OBVIOUSLY, the ceramic mug gets hotter in the microwave than the glass mug. Why? Thoughts? I've reheated coffee in other "normal" coffee mugs, and not had this happen. Could it have something to do with this being Pfaltzgraff? Do they do something different with the way they make stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Jeemes Kelly Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Seems like some things heat up in the microwave a lot mroe than others. I have a bowl that I use to heat soup and oatmeal, because it works better in the microwave than my others. I don't really know what the difference is. I've never had a problem with a coffee cup...except one I set on top of a kerosene heater to warm my coffee up a little, then lost track of time, then tried to pick it up. I had a heavy duty plastic cup my Army recruiter gavce me that wouldn't heat up at all, no matter how long you microwaved it, but it was too small for my coffee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colorado Coffinmaker Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Pyrex is basically Glass. Glass is a liquid. Glass Radiates heat and cold without retention. Ceramic is a solid. Ceramic doesn't radiate heat like glass does. It absorbs it. Lots of it. Coffinmaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Nelson Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 You never really know what's in ceramic. Some are fine in the microwave, others will get hot. But the real head scratcher is in the glaze on the ceramic. Some of the pigments they use are metal oxide compounds (as are some ceramics) that may absorb more microwave energy. Unless an item is marked "microwave safe" I'd test it the way you did, by filling it with water and zapping it although I'd start at like 10 or 15 seconds and see if got warm. If it was okay, I'd try a longer burn. The risk in going the full three minutes right from the start is that if it gets really hot in a small area, like the painted pattern on the side of your mug, it might shatter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billy Bristol Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Some clays for ceramics have materials in them that microwaves do effect. So even though a microwave was designed primarily to heat water it can heat other materials. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowhouse Sam # 25171 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 You want hot? Pour hot coffee into a metal cup! For no apparent reason it suddenly becomes twice as hot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Harley, #14153 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Engineer talking here... Microwaves heat items by passing through the mass and causing particles inside to move. Movement = heat energy. Some particles move more than others, hence the way different solids heat at different rates in the "radar range". Here's a useless bit of fascinating trivia about everyone's favorite coffee warmer... In 1945 the specific heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.[7][8] To verify his finding, Spencer created a high density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly. On 8 October 1945,[9] Raytheon filed a United States patent application for Spencer's microwave cooking process, and an oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed in a Boston restaurant for testing. The first time the public was able to use a microwave oven was in January 1947, when the Speedy Weeny vending machine was placed in Grand Central Terminal to dispense "sizzling delicious" hot dogs. Among those on the development team was robotics pioneer George Devol, who had spent the last part of the war developing radar countermeasures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forty Rod SASS 3935 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Very nice Pfaltzgraff cup. We bought a service for 12 in the same brown / tan colors and same pattern about 32 years ago and have two salad plates and a dinner plate left. I'd buy another set if I could still find them at a reasonable cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted March 30, 2015 Author Share Posted March 30, 2015 Yeah, Charlie. That he was working on a RADAR when he melted the chocolate is why the Amana is a RADARange. And that "glass is mostly liquid while ceramic is mostly solid" makes all kinds of sense. The glazing, also, maybe. They say, in their ads, that this "dinnerware" uses a "salt glaze", whatever that is. Maybe that's part of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawnee McGrutt Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Forty, as they say a day late and a dollar short. I gave a set to Goodwill, last fall. They had been sitting around, since I got divorced. I tried to give them away and no one wanted them, they would of, could of been yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 And be careful you don't end up with superheated water. The burns will be unforgettable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Harley, #14153 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 And don't try to melt SPG blackpowder lube in a Pyrex container. Apparently SPG is completely non-reactive to the microwaves because it stayed solid but the Pyrex container quickly glowed orange and shattered inside the microwave. It took some 'splainin' to the Pretty Wife about that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Nelson Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 And don't try to melt SPG blackpowder lube in a Pyrex container. Apparently SPG is completely non-reactive to the microwaves because it stayed solid but the Pyrex container quickly glowed orange and shattered inside the microwave. Seriously? Pyrex is supposed to be microwave safe. This is troubling. They've changed the formula for Pyrex glass in the past 10 or so years to make it more chip resistant at the expense of its high temperature properties. So you can still use it in the oven, but taking it out of the freezer and putting it under the broiler isn't going to end well. It should still handle the microwave though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Jeemes Kelly Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters Sounds like the time I foolishly tried reheating a boiled egg in the microwave. It seemed OK until I bit into the white, then the yolk exploded on my face and blistered my lip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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