Oven only heats surface of food and containers

[goertzenator]

I have a Danby microwave oven that has the strangest problem. Everything appears to work normally, but only the surface of food and objects seems to absorb radiation. Examples:

1. My wife microwaves a frozen muffin for 12 seconds. The muffin is too hot to touch. This does not seem normal.

2. We have some microwave safe mugs that we've used successfully for some time. If you heat up a mug of tea for 45 seconds and try to take it out of the oven.... burnt finger smell. The tea itself does not seem to be that hot, but I guess it eventually absorbs some heat from the blazing hot mug.

Did the power output of my microwave go way up? Did the wavelength drift so that it no longer penetrates objects? This thing is a scientific curiosity for me, it almost seems a shame to fix it.

Cheers,
Dan.

 

[Jake]

Hi,

I'm not very familiar with microwaves, but Jeff1 has a good web page on them here:
http://www.applianceaid.com/nuker.html

Jake

 

[jerryjay11]

Sounds to me could very well be a stirrer motor/fan problem. Microwaves are not dispersing.

 

[Tim Coyne]

Hot stuff

The muffin has a lot of moisture. Water heats first. In bread products it is like a steam table. That little teaspoon of moisture comes right out of the porous bread and it is like pouring tea on your hand.
That moisture, by the way, vacates the bread and just a little overheating will petrify the product soon after it cools. Try using the different power levels (70, 50, 30) until you get the right touch.

Your microwave safe cups have lost their glaze or developed a crack or have a chip. The microwave latch on the the clay and, slowing up the most there give up most of their energy to the cup. The cup heats the most because it resists the most. Microwave safe is when the material in "invisible" to the wavelengths of the microwave. Your cups are beiing "seen" just fine, no matter what the label. The microwaves can see but they don't read. Watch them fingers. Always test with about 20 seconds.