Ants immune to microwaves?

N

Nasor

Valued Senior Member
Ants recently invaded a ziplock bag of home-baked cookies that a relative sent me. I thought that perhaps I could kill them without destroying the cookies by microwaving them. This lead to a startling discovery: ants seem to be immune to my microwave! I microwaved them for quite a long time, but the ants never seemed to notice. Eventually the cookies got very hot, which seemed to cause the ants to flee, but I suspect that they were simply being burned by the hot cookies. The still crawled around happily on the ceramic plate. What's the deal? I would have expected the ants to have enough water in their bodies to be vulnerable to microwaving. Could it be that they're so small that they somehow manage to avoid the 'hot spots' created by the standing waves? Do ants have less water in their bodies than I suspected?

I eventually gave up and threw the cookies away, but now I'm a little worried that all the radiation might have had some sort of effect on the ants. If you see any news reports of attacks by giant ants in the next few days, I suppose you'll know who to blame.
 
Interesting, although thats not cool trying to microwave ants, and I hope your experiment doesn't inspire others to try:(

I assume they were small ants? Not big bulldog ants or meat ants or anything.

I don't have an explanation, I'm no microwave expert.
 
Dr Lou Natic said:
Interesting, although thats not cool trying to microwave ants, and I hope your experiment doesn't inspire others to try:(
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There wasn't anything malicious about it, I just wanted to be able to eat my cookies without fear of ant bites. And yes, they were very small black ants.
 
Nasor said:
I eventually gave up and threw the cookies away, but now I'm a little worried that all the radiation might have had some sort of effect on the ants. If you see any news reports of attacks by giant ants in the next few days, I suppose you'll know who to blame.
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Apparenly that happened a LOT in the fiftes.
All those old B-Movies were based on true stories of people trying to erradicate pests from their cookies.
People NEVER learn from history!
 
It could be that the ants are smaller than the microwaves. I know radar can't sense anything smaller that its wavelength because the waves just miss it entirely. This may apply to microwaves and cooking. Anyone know what the frequency a microwave's emissions are?
 
Yes, I think you've got it right. I believe the frequency is 2.45GHz, which are radio
waves of course. Edit: Or are they? I know they are larger than visible light
waves, but are they a "part" of the radio wave spectrum?
 
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They are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/ems1.html

"Current microwave ovens operate at a nominal frequency of 2450 MHz, a band assigned by the FCC. "
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/ems2.html

"In interactions with matter, microwave radiation primarily acts to set produce molecular rotation and torsion, which manifests itself by heat. " http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/ems2.html

The ants should heat up, because they have water in them. I wonder they didn't? Maybe the chitin shell reflects the microwaves? Maybe they are just really resistant to heat, and you should have just radiated them a bit longer.

The size of the ants doesn't really matter (I suppose they were bigger than water molecules).
 
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No it doesn't explain another phenomenon. I heard cockroaches (of about an inch across) are resistant to microwave radiation. I would imagine it must be due to water content since these too animals are not too dissimilar (they both have chitonous exoskeletons). U would need to repeat ur experiment on spiders for validation but I am not condoning this!!!
 
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Well, I have been waiting for a chance to break into the 'mad' sciences. Maybe this would be a good chance to establish myself in the field. I wonder if I could get some time on a hospital x-ray machine...
 
Ants have a lot of surface area for their volume. Perhaps they heat up a little, but lose that heat to the surrounding air too quickly for them to get very hot.

Ignoring cold spots, how much power might an ant absorb in this situation?
If the air in the microwave is at room temperature or a little above, at what temperature will the ant reach equilibrium?
What's the ant-air thermal conductivity?
Is the ant's blackbody radiation significant?
Why am I asking questions about ants?
 
True but as Candide says it doesn't explain everything. I don't believe it is due to rapid cooling coz assuming their in there for a while, they will be heating all the time. It doesn't explain how they still survive heating until they find the nearest cool spots (although I dont know how many or how frequent they would be in the oven. Just remember, things heat very quickly in these! I still think water content has something to do with it. We all know Ants have much less water density than animal/(veg) flesh.
 
I don't believe it is due to rapid cooling coz assuming their in there for a while, they will be heating all the time.
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So? They're cooling all the time as well.

The hotter something gets, the faster it loses heat, until energy-out = energy-in, and you've reached equilibrium. This applies to everything, not just ants.

Here's an experiment:
Put half a cup of water in the microwave.
Now sprinkle some tiny drops of water (ant sized) around on the microwave turntable.
Zap for one minute on high.

How hot is the water in the cup?
How hot are the drops on the turntable?
 
I think I know what ur trying to say. Without doing the experiment I'd imagine the drops are actually colder than the cup of water due to its high surface area and so it loses heat quickly. In this case cooling could be a major reason for ant microwave survival because insects have the highest surface area of all animals.
 
To possible answers
1. Chitin may be resistance to microwaves, to test this you kind try another larger insect (such as a cockroach) or try to see if you can heat up fingernail clippings, although mammalian chitin is not identical to insect chitin. It may be that there is very little water and other microwave absorbing materials in chitin.

2. The ants are smaller then the microwaves. Lets see someone said 2.45Ghz that would be 2.45Ghz x ~299,000,000m/s speed of light would mean a wave length of ~.12meters or 4.7 inches. Unfortunately objects can still absorbed light that larger then them self’s but I don’t know the details on that (optics are out of my field)
 
Nothing beats cooking ants with the good ol' Sun and a magnifying glass! You shoulda killed em that way. Fun too!
Is it only water that is affected by microwaves? Seems to me that when I put relatively dry food that has a lot of sugar in it, in the oven, it heats up REALLY quick.
Anywho, this thread inspired me to start my very first one. Hopefully it hasn't been done at all or at least a long while.
 
Unfortunately objects can still absorbed light that larger then them self’s but I don’t know the details on that.
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I think anything smaller than the wavelength of blue light (400 nm) needs to be viewed with an electron microscope. The resolution on a light microscope would be terrible for anything that small (if you could see it at all).
 
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