Fun video about microwave oven now vs thirty years ago:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0</a><p>"The Antique Microwave Oven that's Better than Yours"
by Technology Connections
2016. Here's some of the slide from freescale/NXP about this from then: <a href="https://twitter.com/vivekgani/status/684893901602205696" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/vivekgani/status/684893901602205696</a> .<p>Earlier version of myself used to obsess about ideas like this, these days more interested in appropriate technology rather than overall efficiency.<p>see also a demo video from then: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7fhBUTMso" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7fhBUTMso</a>
I once about 23 years ago was invited over a girlfriends mom for a roast beef dinner. I watched her put the roast in a microwave and blast it. I was in shock but didn’t say anything. She used the oven and did up some Yorkshire puddings quickly and already had some mashed potatoes. Next thing I know dinner is done. I was certain leather was being served. But to my utter surprise the roast was cooked perfectly medium rare and was to this day the second best piece of meat I have tasted. I don’t have the guts to take a $23 piece of meat and risk trying it myself.
Appears to have stalled. The group behind it hasn't updated their site since 2017: <a href="http://rfenergy.org/press-room/" rel="nofollow">http://rfenergy.org/press-room/</a>
No, it's not.<p>These are specialized RF mosfets that cost hundreds of dollars a piece, and you currently need at least four to come close to the output power of a weak consumer microwave. The power supply and control and protection circuitry is also exotic and expensive.<p>A 2 kW magnetron costs six bucks in quantity.
The standard Cavity Magnetron is pretty solid state already. Seems a strange way to phrase this. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron</a>
Actually I would say the future of microwaves is things like the miele dialog oven, which uses essentially MIMO techniques to direct the microwaves (at about 2.4 GHz IIRC, so the thing has a lot of shielding build in). I find it amazing how microwaves have just become worse over the last decades. Lots more functions in the UI without being needed, because the oven can't actually do anything interesting. AFAIK, pretty much every microwave still does PWM to change power for example.
>With solid-state sources, frequency can be shifted (2.4-2.5GHz, for example) to move nodes and anti-nodes around the cavity...<p>Probably not so great for WiFi...
A bit off-topic, but anyone know what came of Panasonic's "cyclonic wave" technology? Does it work as well as it's advertised? It seems nice in theory so I'm kind of confused why it doesn't seem to be used in more models.
Microwaves made cooking quicker, which changed lives, which changed the way society was structured.<p>Anything that reduces home chores will increase the size and change the demographic of the workforce for instance.<p>Microwaves are also very flawed, it'd be like if rice cookers cooked rice only 85% as good and the rice was unhealthier.<p>This article is 2016 and nothing has changed.