Q 01/05

In a famous story, what melted in an engineer's pocket near wartime equipment and inspired the microwave oven?

A) A candy bar

B) A stick of butter

C) A wax candle

D) A cheese sandwich

Answer · why

A) A candy bar

A candy bar going soft made the engineer curious enough to try the same waves on other foods. He was not the first to notice the effect, only the firs...

Q 02/05

Popcorn was the first food cooked on purpose with microwaves; which food came second and exploded?

A) A potato

B) A hot dog

C) An egg

D) A tomato

Answer · why

C) An egg

An egg came second, and it burst in the face of a colleague who had leaned in for a closer look. Steam builds up inside the shell with nowhere to go.

Q 03/05

The microwave oven grew out of an engineer's work on which Second World War detection technology?

A) Sonar

B) Radar

C) Loran

D) Huff-Duff

Answer · why

B) Radar

Radar sets ran on powerful microwave tubes, and by the war's end one American firm was building 2,600 of those tubes a day. The oven simply pointed th...

Q 04/05

What one-time payment did the inventor of the microwave oven receive from his employer for the patent?

A) 2 dollars

B) 200 dollars

C) 20,000 dollars

D) 2 million dollars

Answer · why

A) 2 dollars

Two dollars was the token sum his employer paid every staff inventor for a company patent. He earned no royalties, though he did rise to senior vice p...

Q 05/05

Contrary to kitchen lore, which metal item can usually sit in a running microwave oven without sparking?

A) A dinner fork

B) Crumpled foil

C) A soup spoon

D) A twist tie

Answer · why

C) A soup spoon

A soup spoon has no pointed ends, so electric charge has nowhere to pile up and leap through the air. A fork's tines do the opposite, which is why the...