Today’s everyday explained explores the reason behind the warning. We all know that stainless steel utensils, or metal objects in general, including cutlery, should never be placed inside a microwave oven while operational.
Microwaves bounce off the oven’s interior metal walls, can pass through paper, glass, and plastic, but they get absorbed by food. More specifically, the microwaves get absorbed by the food’s water content. The transfer of energy that takes place leads to the water molecules of food oscillating back and forth rapidly, which creates heat and warms up the food. It can also cook the food from the inside out, the outside in, or uniformly, depending on where the water lies. In the words of Professor Ross, it is “counterproductive to put something metallic inside your microwave oven if you want to heat it up. She explained that a metal object placed inside the microwave oven deflects the microwaves away from the food. The deflected electromagnetic waves jump around erratically inside the appliance, which can end up damaging the interior of the oven. In fact, metal is so good at reflecting microwave radiation that the window built into the front of microwave ovens contains a fine metallic mesh that we can see through, but from which microwaves cannot escape.
