This is not an update; it is a random thought.

[brooksmoses]

Fact 1: Microwave ovens work because they produce microwaves tuned to a vibratory frequency of liquid water.

Fact 2: Microwave ovens are rather poor at defrosting chicken; the parts that get defrosted first become partly cooked by the time the remainder of the chicken is defrosted.

Question Arising From These Facts: Would it be possible to build a microwave oven that was tuned to a vibratory frequency of solid water that would defrost chicken properly?

Comments

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that the vibratory frequency of solid water is different from that of liquid water. I thought it was a molecule by molecule thing.

Hmm.

[brooksmoses]

It mostly is, but I think the intermolecule bonds in ice would be strong enough to affect it. Or, more accurately, I know that they are, but I don't know if it's enough to create an effect that actually makes a noticable difference.

Hmm; I could look this up, rather than speculating. And it seems from this page that the frequencies in ice are about 7% or so higher.

More than that, however, it appears (reference here) that microwave ovens aren't exciting vibrational modes of the nuclei; they're exciting something else that I don't quite understand that involves rotation and electron clouds. Water in ice can't really rotate much, and so ice is practically transparent to the waves in microwave ovens -- the frequencies involved are on the kHz range for ice, rather than the GHz range for liquid water. Which indicates that making an ice-tuned microwave defroster may be rather difficult.