From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Owsley Sent: Friday, February 04, 2011 3:24 PM To: [email protected] Cc: IEEE EMC forum Subject: Re: How much power to pop corn this fast?
The Radar lore has it that a Sailor walked somewhere in front of the new Radar antenna and the chocolate bar melted. And yes, you would pick the usual 2.4 GHz since water molecules have a resonance there that the builds up heat due to friction so said the physics prof. And we have hacked microwave ovens to get a cheap source of high frequency high power, just remove the door and bypass the interlock. You sure don't linger when moving devices in or out of the active field. We stood to the side and reached over, quickly. To add a bit to Bill’s mention of not lingering in the field, I could mention my incident from about 30 years ago, when I was squirting as much RF as I could generate onto a Tomahawk cruise missile to test the shielding effectiveness of compartment gaskets. I was applying about 300 Watts forward power at 10 GHz to a pyramidal horn antenna, and I went into the chamber to rotate the horn polarization. Observing normal best practices, I grasped the rear of the horn in one hand, and curled the fingers of my other hand into the antenna aperture. I was struck by the odd feeling that hot air was blowing out of the horn, and I suppose it took me a second or so to translate this into the reality that the RF was still turned on. Yes, I retreated quickly, but the (very short duration) sensation was almost relaxing and pleasant, somewhat like those lavatory hot air hand dryers. Remember that there is another ISM band at 13.65 MHz, where industry does things like accelerate the curing of plywood bonds, thus, high-power RF technology is readily available there. Consider scaling the popcorn application. At 13.65 MHz, we could use popcorn kernels about 4 feet wide. True, this raises some agricultural process problems, and we might need a salt truck and a butter tanker, but imagine the awesome sight of that pop-off! Ed Price [email protected] <blocked::mailto:[email protected]> WB6WSN NARTE Certified EMC Engineer Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab Cubic Defense Applications San Diego, CA USA 858-505-2780 Military & Avionics EMC Is Our Specialty - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]>
