New microwave oven with metal rack..please advise?!

[charlie g]

This is OT...but then again I use our over the stove large GE microwave oven to fabricate growth media.

Perhaps in June...I purchased a brand new large GE over the stove microwave oven (with exhaust fans/screen filters, with the lights for stove top illumination.).

Long story short..in middle of the cook chamber are supports for a metal wire rack you can place in or remove. We have no need for this metal rack...but what's this about no metal in microwave ovens?

Of course when I called back to the sales person...he too said it's surprizing...and he can't say why it's okay..he just knows it's okay to have a metal rack in that GE oven.

Anyone know why micro wave ovens tolerate a metal rack...yet I a few months ago...failded to remove the tiny strip of aluminum foil from something I was reheating...wow were there sparks!

I'd appreciate any comments...it's been decades since I had a physics course, charlie guevara

[gekko]

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/m ... en.340690/

[charlie g]

Incredible how your kind link dead-on answered my querry, thanks gekko!

So the kind posters in that down to earth physics forum state induced current flows in metals delocalized electron clouds...behave differently at metal surface than at metals core ( when I took physics...it was often said the current flow is more on the metal surface?). The geometry of the metal also may cause locations of high charge density...with sufficient charge density sparking may ensue, adjacent materials may flame, minute areas of the air itself may breakdown from insulator to charge conducting plasma...but the shape of rounded metal racks don't offer surface geometry for currents to develope high charge densities....this all sounds like solid state physics!(to me that is).

I have no need for that metal rack in that microwave oven...it gets in the way with items placement and removal from the cooking chamber...it also would one more item to have to clean. BTW, one poster in that terrific physics forum did say it is tiny metal strips..in the 'this side down' oil pocket of microwave popcorn..these metal strips...tiny as they are...are the heat source to get that oil pocket to pop the microwave popcorn...if I remember to...I will dissect a finished bag of microwave popcorn..to look for the metal strips...to with my old epi-B&L metalurgic microscope...observe how the metal looks after the cooking...vrs in a dissected uncooked bag.

What a right on reply to my querry, gekko! charlie guevara

[Crater Eddie]

Ours came with that rack too. We never used it, haven't seen it in years.
I would be interested in what you find re the metal strips in the popcorn bag, hope you get some good photos.
CE

[cpablate]

Thats why it is always recommended to read reviews on particular models to make sure everything you get is according to your preferences.

[ananna84]

I had one with rack that was combo and comes with the oven. but if you have own space then dont use that unless u needed. that will save your space and design .

[Hobbyst46]

Charlie
Out of curiousity and assuming that the relevant physics are understood, I navigated to GE site and found manuals for MW ovens like yours.
There are specific safety warnings in a page that I usually would toss to the trash, and they instruct you to take the racks out when not in use (apparently when just MW and not ordinary {IR} heating), and that the racks should not be used at the same time with the turntable ( although that may be due to mechanical considerations only, that they do not bump into each other).
Anyway GE has mentioned thd racks specifically in the manual.

[billbillt]

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[Rodney]

you can cook a roach a lot quicker than bouncing electrical current off of metallic objects, metal racks etc. inside a microwave oven, and your microwave oven may last a lot longer without all the extra current bouncing around off metal.