green olives

my cat has a pssion for green olives, but only when they come on pizza.... so today we tried to give her fake 'pizza olives' by warming them in the microwave.... well, i cut up the olive into several peices, and put it in the microwave on a plastic bowl lid, and started the microwave on high for 30 seconds. after maybe 2 seconds, the olives began to give off quite a bit of sparks. i read the ingedients on the label of the olive bottle, and i dont see why this would happen... anybody else know?

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Hi Nightfall,

I have no experience on the field on olives and microwaves, but here's a guess of what could happened:

- You could have put too few olives in the microwave. When there is no food to absorb the microwave radiation, nasty things can happen inside.

- You may have used dry olives. Microwaves heat food by only heating the water inside. When there's no water in the microwave, you're basically turning it on without anything inside. I am sure the manual of the microwave will tell you that's not a good idea.

An absolute wild guess that might even do the trick is to put a small bowl of water inside the microwave aswel (be careful when removing that from the microwave, be sure to let the water cool off a bit before removing it). That might absord the radiation that is not needed to heat the olives.

Bye!

Crisp

 

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ah...

Maybe you could put the cat in with the olives, that way when the olives are done the cat doesn't have to wait.

On second thought maybe that isn't such a great idea after all.
Who wants cat flavored olives?

 

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thank you for the new project ideas!

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Cat might like the sauce on the olives.

 

nope its the olives.. when we order pizza, she'll eat 6 or 7 of them, and go tearing through the house... little kitten ears and all.... which is hilarious if you also know that my cat is 11 years old, has a wrinkled forhead, and is missing teeth.. lol..

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http://website.lineone.net/~stolarczyk/
It's the World Carrot Museum, but it does discuss sparking vegetables:
If you often cook mixed vegetables from frozen in a microwave, on a microwaveable plate you may notice that carrots produce sparks during cooking and, on closer examination, they display small burns. Why is this? several factors make frozen carrots susceptible to the effect described (although other vegetables also do this).

Firstly, dense vegetables such as carrots have a higher amount of minerals in them - iron, magnesium and silenium - than other food items and sometimes create an arcing effect in a microwave. This tends to happen more in glass dishes. Sparks result as the microwaves reflect or bounce off the metal. the "arcing" does not harm the food, but it does prevent it from heating thoroughly because reflected microwaves will not cook. Also,extensive arcing can damage your oven's magnetron tube. If arcing occurs,turn off the microwave oven and finish cooking the food on the range top.
Arcing may occur in other vegetables, and most often appears in green peppers and green beans.

Secondly, while microwaves are extremely good at heating liquid water, ice is almost totally transparent to them, so it is actually quite difficult to get ice to melt in a domestic microwave oven. The "defrost" option on a microwave oven relies on intermittent heating of a small amount of liquid water present on the food, and heat conduction from these areas into frozen material. By putting frozen material into the microwave oven with continuous energy input, no time is given for thermal conductivity effects, and therefore a colossal heating effect occurs on a very localised surface area. These areas, typically at the extreme point of the carrot, will dry out rapidly and then char, essentially forming small carbon points.

Thirdly, carrots are relatively large objects (compared to, say frozen peas) and because microwaves are essentially varying high voltage fields, a large alternating electrical potential exists between the highly conductive charred sections.

Finally, carrots are generally given quite angular cuts, giving sharp points which will yield the highest field gradients. The combination of a large alternating field across a good electrical conductor with sharp points causes electrical breakdown of the air and the sparks which accompany this. Depending upon the precise conditions, it is equally possible for charring to be a secondary effect, rather than a cause. In this case, the discharge may originate from uncharred points, with charring only occurring as a huge current passes through a relatively small point.

Hope this helps.

Edit:
I think that, reading your problem, it's a combination of the angular cuts and the high mineral content of olives. I'm not sure the water will really help.

 

on the back of the jar, the label reads that olives do not have any signafcant amount of minierals. but they sure do contain alot of salt... also, they are not frozen... and.. i was thinkin... for the person who mentioned the lack of water... olives do not spark when reheating pizza, which is much less hydrated.

 

Now this is a cat...

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Miniscule salt crystals would probably be enough to cause the sparking, NF.

 

if yer gonna put water in tha microwave...

use a coffe straw (the red little ones) so that you don't get boiling water burning your hand when you move the cup/saucer....some chemistry crap I'm sure several of you in here could explain better than I can. Or you could just let it sit, like Crisp said.

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If your going to microwave any small food source (Like a cut up olive) I suggest you place a microwavible mug or bowl with some water in (A similar measurement of liquid to whats in a can of coke)

This will absorb the microwaves that aren't being used to cook your food and stop your microwave from arching up (arching is what I used called superconducting of metal that excerts a large amount of light)

What sparkling you saw was exactly like Riomacleod said "Small salt crystals", with all those microwaves bouncing around the crystals at first focus the microwaves and then shatters the crystal.

As for why your cat eats the Olives, it's possible that the same solution used for pickling the olive was used in tinning anchovies.

 

I think that photo has tricked the eye. That girl's probably only a foot and a half tall or something.

But if not, that, if anything, is definitely a cat.