For many decades a microwaved almost halved grape experiment’s reaction has been a fascinating experiment to watch. The trick involves cutting a grape nearly in half, leaving the skin intact on the one side, and putting it in the microwave. In just a few seconds, the radiation ignites a hotspot and the grape sparks in the middle and sends off a bright puff of light, or plasma.
According to Cosmos magazine one of the theories to explain the reaction is that the hotspot creating the spark occurs because the skin conducts electrons back and forth.
Author Pablo Bianucci of Concordia University, Montreal, states that the grape halves are thought to “act like a radio’s “dipole antenna”, converting microwaves to an electrical current across the skin bridge” and eventually generating the plasma.
Upon using thermal imaging techniques and computer simulations to test their theory and other theories researcher Pablo and his colleagues discovered that the reaction could occur even with no skin bridge.
According to colleague Hamza Khattak when studying the system further, it was discovered that it is not the skin that is important, but the fact that the grapes are like balls of water. The plasma is created due to an amplification of the electromagnetic field in between the grapes.
Further pursuing this, the researchers demonstrated that hotspots also formed using two grape-sized, skinless hydrogel beads made of water. This showed that the intact skin merely holds the grape halves together. When the two whole beads were microwaved close together, the electromagnetic build-up caused the beads to bump against each other.
Also see: 10 Fruits containing the most and least amounts of sugar
