COOKING BY MAGIC

There was an instruction manual for the microwave oven lying around in the kitchen. I write instruction manuals and I like thinking about how to present information; I was always going to pick it up and flick through, once I saw it there.

The booklet went into great detail about the discovery of microwave radiation following World War II and the invention of radar. It described the magnetron, busily generating microwaves at the back of the turntable, and about how the rest of the Panasonic NN-E271-WM works.

I haven't thought about this in a while. I sat in the kitchen, remembering my electromagnetics lecturer teaching us about waveguides, back at university. It was quite elegant actually - he had started with deriving Maxwell's Equations and then he used them to show us how electromagnetic waves propagate. He took us from first principles, right through to TV aerials, fibre optic cables and eventually to the microwave oven. Then with a little Scottish chuckle he reminded us that mobile phones were slowly cooking our wee brains.

I learned some new stuff from the user guide. I did not know for example, that microwaves have a faster effect on sugar and fat molecules - presumably because of their long chains. Similarly, I didn't know that the radiation typically has a depth range of just under two inches.

There was even a diagram of a pot of gravy with horizontal arrows passing through it, just so that we got the picture of what is actually happening to our food as it spins around on the illuminated turntable.

Electromagnetic radiation fills the box, bombarding each molecule from the outside in, exciting the food particles until they resonate, bounce around, create friction and generate heat.

Why don't we think about this kind of thing more often? My colleague said he didn't think most people cared as long as their pasties came out piping hot.

"But if you don't have science," I said, "Surely all you've got left to explain it... is the magic box." I don't understand why people wouldn't be enthralled by the magic box and want to find out what makes it tick.

Perhaps we enjoy the mystery. I can understand that - I don't want to know how an escapologist escapes his certain death to appear at the back of the theatre in the audience. There's a certain art to that kind of magic which it would be rude to deconstruct.

But given that we generally operate the microwave ourselves and then eat whatever comes out of it, I think it might be important to know at the very least that it wasn't cooked by some form of mystical wizardry.

Although, having said that I have looked quite puzzled a few times, by something that I've pulled out of the microwave, wondering what on earth that was supposed to be.

Maybe I should spend more time in the instruction manual.