Microwave Oven Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about microwave ovens.

Microwave Oven Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is a microwave oven?
A: A microwave oven (also commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range.

This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce thermal energy in a process known as what?
A: Dielectric heating.

The development of the cavity magnetron in the UK made possible the production of what?
A: Electromagnetic waves of a small enough wavelength (microwaves).

Who is generally credited with inventing the modern microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war?
A: American engineer Percy Spencer.

Named the "Radarange", when was it first sold?
A: In 1946.

Raytheon later licensed its patents for a home-use microwave oven that was first introduced by Tappan in 1955, but these units were still too what?
A: Large and expensive for general home use.

When did Sharp Corporation introduce the first microwave oven with a turntable?
A: Between 1964 and 1966.

The countertop microwave oven was first introduced in 1967 by whom?
A: The Amana Corporation.

After Sharp introduced low-cost microwave ovens affordable for residential use in the late 1970s, their use spread into what?
A: Commercial and residential kitchens around the world.

Microwave ovens are a common kitchen appliance and are popular for reheating what?
A: Previously cooked foods and cooking a variety of foods.

Unlike conventional ovens, microwave ovens usually do not what?
A: Directly brown or caramelize food.

Exceptions occur in rare cases where the oven is used to heat what?
A: Frying-oil and other very oily items (such as bacon), which attain far higher temperatures than that of boiling water.

Microwave ovens have limited roles in professional cooking, because the boiling-range temperatures of a microwave will not produce what?
A: The flavorful chemical reactions that frying, browning, or baking at a higher temperature will.

However, additional heat sources can be what?
A: Added to microwave ovens.

The exploitation of high-frequency radio waves for heating substances was made possible by the development of what?
A: Vacuum tube radio transmitters around 1920.

By 1930 the application of short waves to heat human tissue had developed into what medical therapy?
A: Diathermy.

At the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, Westinghouse demonstrated the cooking of foods between two metal plates attached to what?
A: A 10 kW, 60 MHz shortwave transmitter.

The Westinghouse team, led by I. F. Mouromtseff, found that foods like steaks and potatoes could be what?
A: Cooked in minutes.

The primary heating effect of all types of electromagnetic fields at both radio and microwave frequencies occur via what?
A: The dielectric heating effect, as polarized molecules are affected by a rapidly alternating electric field.

The invention of “what”, made possible the production of electromagnetic waves of a small enough wavelength (microwaves)?
A: The cavity magnetron.

The magnetron was originally a crucial component in the development of what?
A: Short wavelength radar during World War II.

The magnetron was later described by American historian James Phinney Baxter III as what?
A: "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores".

Contracts were awarded to Raytheon and other companies for what?
A: Mass production of the magnetron.

In 1945, the specific heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by whom?
A: Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine.

Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to do what?
A: Melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket.

The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was what?
A: Popcorn.

What was the second?
A: An egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.

On 8 October 1945, Raytheon filed a United States patent application for what?
A: Spencer's microwave cooking process.

An oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed where?
A: In a Boston restaurant for testing.

In 1947, Raytheon built the what?
A: The “Radarange", the first commercially available microwave oven.

An early Radarange was installed (and remains) in the galley of the what?
A: The nuclear-powered passenger/cargo ship NS Savannah.

In what year did Japan's Sharp Corporation begin manufacturing microwave ovens?
A: In 1961.

Between 1964 and 1966, Sharp introduced the first microwave oven with a what?
A: A turntable, a feature that promotes convenient even heating of food.

In 1965, who acquired Amana?
A: Raytheon.

In 1967, they introduced the first popular home model, the countertop Radarange, at a price of what?
A: US$495 ($4,000 in 2017 dollars).

Sales volume of 40,000 units for the U.S. industry in 1970 grew to how many by 1975?
A: One million.

By 1972, Litton (Litton Atherton Division, Minneapolis) introduced two new microwave ovens, priced at what?
A: $349 and $399, to tap into the market estimated at $750 million by 1976.

By the late 1970s, technological advances led to rapidly falling what?
A: Prices.

By 1986, roughly what percentage of households in the U.S. owned a microwave oven?
A: 25%.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that what percentage of American households owned a microwave oven in 1997?
A: Over 90%.

In Canada, fewer than 5% of households had a microwave oven in 1979, but more than 88% of households owned one by what year?
A: 1998.

Microwaves are a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation with a frequency higher than ordinary radio waves but lower than what?
A: Infrared light.

It is a common misconception that microwave ovens heat food by operating at a what?
A: Special resonance of water molecules in the food.

Why is microwave heating more efficient on liquid water than on frozen water?
A: The movement of molecules is more restricted in frozen water.

Compared to liquid water, why is microwave heating less efficient on fats and sugars?
A: Fats and sugars have a smaller molecular dipole moment.

However, due to the lower specific heat capacity of fats and oils and their higher vaporization temperature, they often what?
A: Attain much higher temperatures inside microwave ovens.

Usually choice of power level doesn't affect intensity of the microwave radiation; instead, the magnetron is what?
A: Cycled on and off every few seconds, thus altering the large scale duty cycle.

There are microwave ovens on the market that allow full-power what?
A: Defrosting.

They do this by exploiting the properties of the electromagnetic radiation LSM modes. LSM full-power defrosting may actually achieve more even results than slow defrosting.

Spinach retains nearly all its foliate when cooked in a microwave; in comparison, it loses about how much when boiled?
A: 77%.

Bacon cooked by microwave has significantly lower levels of what?
A: Carcinogenic nitrosamines than conventionally cooked bacon.

Steamed vegetables tend to maintain more nutrients when microwaved than when what?
A: Cooked on a stovetop.

The lower temperature of cooking (the boiling point of water) is a significant safety benefit compared to baking in the oven or frying, because it eliminates the formation of what?
A: Tars and char, which are carcinogenic.

A 2017 study showed that about 60% of the germs were killed but the remaining ones what?
A: Quickly re-colonized the sponge.