Lets Talk About Things Science Cannot Explain

[J Riff]

rEALLY?!? Dang, let me open a localized wormhole here... half a tick... dang, I'm out of energy, can anyone lend me a few million ergs?

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

Our inability to see that Global Warming is not a figment of out imagination.

Sadly, since the people who believe this are generally the same ones who believe the Earth is 6000 years old, there are no fossils, and science is just a bunch of opinions, it's actually quite easy to explain.

 

[J Riff]

Flat Earth, hollow Earth... what else am I forgetting... oh yes, the Earth is an egg, due to hatch soon. And microwave ovens are radioactive.

 

[BAYLOR]

Sadly, since the people who believe this are generally the same ones who believe the Earth is 6000 years old, there are no fossils, and science is just a bunch of opinions, it's actually quite easy to explain.

It's more a question of greed and willful stupidity.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

And microwave ovens are radioactive.

The truth is a little stranger.

 

[J Riff]

Heats up the water molecules only? I have torn apart at least 50 microwaves... to get at the copper/aluminum and magnets. I don't feel the slightest bit radioactive, not glowing. The dangerous bit is the carcinogenic stuff on the end of the whatsit, there... but it's in solid form. Still, I allus wrap it up and put it in with batteries and other nasty stuff. What is that stuff, cooked onto the end, where the tungsten thingy is...?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The dangerous bit is the carcinogenic stuff on the end of the whatsit, there... but it's in solid form. Still, I allus wrap it up and put it in with batteries and other nasty stuff

I know exactly how a microwave oven works, and how the components are made, how they work and what is in them.
I've no idea what you are talking about!

 

[Cathbad]

Flat Earth, hollow Earth... what else am I forgetting... oh yes, the Earth is an egg, due to hatch soon. And microwave ovens are radioactive.

Yes.

 

[J Riff]

The stuff Ray... the stuff baked on there, it's usually blue. If it crumbles, or if it got dissolved somehow... argh! I will try to look it up, one moment pliz.
Beryllium oxide. Baked on as insulation? by the tungsten bit... deadly carcinogen if ingested. That's the stuff I avoided when smashing an oven open in a dark alley in the rain. I had it down to less than five min. and I was off with the good bits... and the beryllium I very conscientiously got rid of properly rather than leaving it laying about.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Beryllium oxide. Baked on as insulation?

No
Beryllium Oxide: It's not crumbly nor dissolves. It's either white, or as a crystal colourless. The only non-metal (electrical insulator) with more heat conduction is diamond. Its dust is carcinogenic, but it's a very hard stable solid. You'd have saw or grind it to get dust, which would be difficult. You'd not get dust by breaking a piece.

I don't think so. It's only used inside semiconductor devices as thermal conducting and electrical insulation between silicon chip and heat sink bolt / tab. As a result, I've never actually seen Beryllium Oxide. I don't break open the RF transistors with it inside.
The filament is tungsten and inside the magnetron (a vacuum thermionic diode), it got a special coating that *MIGHT* be mildly radioactive, barium oxides (maybe other compounds). Any potential radiation can't escape the magnetron casing, and if it exists is probably harmless. You can't get at the filament.

The only Electronics is the on/off controller. The magnetron creates microwaves directly (at 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz band) from a large heavy high voltage AC Mains transformer.

Totally pure water heats badly.

There is no cancer risk, but if you disabled the door interlock and used it open, you'd get get cataracts if you didn't just get heating burns. The metal mesh in the window of the door blocks microwaves.

 

[J Riff]

Barium, then. Thing is, it can get powdered, so I was careful. Better safe than sorry. Who knew.
What I DO have laying around, is a bunch of liquid mercury capsules... from old smoke detectors?
I bet Mercury is waaay more dangerous than B. Oxide.... which is usually blue on the ovens here, whatever it actually is.
These ovens are everywere, sitting on the street, so good thing they can't radiate passersby or leech into the water system.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Barium, then. Thing is, it can get powdered,

Barium oxide and it's inaccessible on the filament. Very little of it too. Extremely thin coating and quite safe. You'd need a saw or grinder to open the magnetron and get the filament out anyway.

Smoke detectors don't have mercury. They often* have a man-made element that doesn't exist in nature: Americium.
The smoke detector has about 0.28 micrograms (0.000,000,000,28 Kg or about 0.000,000,000,57 pounds!). So though it might be more dangerous than Plutonium for radioactivity, you'd need millions of smoke detectors to be an evil villain. Even using a smoke detector as a pillow is probably safe (I'm not sure what chemicals might leach out of the plastic). Plastics often have a bromine based fire retardant. Bromine is nasty stuff. That's why usually white plastic goes yellow in daylight. The UV is breaking down the fire retardant.

Similarly the mantles for gas lamps are radioactive too, they use thorium. You can make a safer nuclear power station with thorium, but not starting with gas lamp mantles.

Household bleach and cleaning chemicals are dangerous. One kind is chlorine based. It can react violently with the other kind and give off the sort of chlorine gas compounds that remind one of WWI. Don't mix cleaning / bleaching / disinfection products. Some will give off Phenol compounds if they react.


[*There are smoke detectors that use an optical chamber. They are more expensive and less reliable!]

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Similarly the mantles for gas lamps are radioactive too, they use thorium. You can make a safer nuclear power station with thorium, but not starting with gas lamp mantles.

Used in schools and colleges for radioactive decay experiments.

 

[J Riff]

Well, I came across a dumpster full of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors this week. Hundreds of them; an entire apt. complex had replaced all the detectors, and dumped them into the gobbidge.
Those little glass Americium bubbles look exactly like liquid mercury? The blue barium stuff... well, when you tear out the magnetron and gouge off the metal flange bits, and rip out the magnets, that stuff can be crunched and almost powdered, easily. In the dark, in the rain. Nice to know t'isnt fatalistic.
Anyway, I don't scrap out microwaves anymore... I'm past that now and feel fine (coffff) really, even though there's a buck or 3 copper/aluminum in there, the real danger is hacking heck out of your hands in the process of dismantlement. This is becos of those stupid screws used to make sure people with only normal screwdrivers can't open them. In such a case, a chisel and hammer work fine, but accidents do happen. Of course I have the stupid weird screwdriver set but who can carry such a thing around everywbere? Scrapping some of the zillions free electronics laying about was educational but not very profitable otherwise.
Edit: waitatic... Americium is in those little... cages, metal huts inside a smoke detector... so where did I get these liquid mercury tubes... thermostats? Can't remember!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The blue barium stuff... well, when you tear out the magnetron and gouge off the metal flange bits, and rip out the magnets, that stuff can be crunched and almost powdered, easily. In the dark, in the rain. Nice to know t'isnt fatalistic.

Not barium, just some sort of insulation.

Liquid mercury is only in tilt switches, ultra fast relays (up till 1970s), old glass thermometers. There is a very small amount in CFLs, Fluorescent lamps (regular or sun bed or high pressure warehouse / street lights. The electric arc in mercury vapour gives of UVB and UVB, a phosphor mix converts that to visible light. No mercury in Thermostats, mechanical ones use bimetallic strips, electronic ones use a thermistor, diode, semiconductor IC sensor or thermocouple.

 

[J Riff]

Okay... time to attempt an intelligble question. What, if anything, would you consider worth salvaging, from all sorts of electronics/tech, that is out there?
Not scrap value - re-purposing or future worth of some kind. Or, is it all reduced to the level of planned obsolescence, like cellphones; older ones are already unuseable. There's gold in them hills, yeah, but I hate throwing away cameras, gadgets, endless circuit boards, gimcracks and bits n pieces of this and that.
Little electric motors? I have a box of over a hundred, but may as well chuck 'em for all the good they are. Would have been thrilled to have cool little electric motors as a kid - now you can't give them away.

 

[Cathbad]

I'd like to see an end to "social media". Nothing has been worse for the advancement of human civilization.

 

[J Riff]

An experiment going wronger by the day. Soon the phones will be calling the people and telling them what to do, where to go, what to believe. Someone (maybe me) called them: BS (brain substitute) Boxes.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

What, if anything, would you consider worth salvaging, from all sorts of electronics/tech, that is out there?

Anything older than 1990s might be worth repairing / restoring.
Hardly any reusable parts in anything new.

No decent speakers built in TVs now, you need 1980s -1990s wooden box speakers + HiFi. The sound bars, "phone docks" and "home theatre" plastic podules are all sound quality of a 1965 Hong Kong pocket set with 3" speaker. Dreadful.

Nearly impossible to buy a decent radio. Even car Radios now are worse than 10 years ago, they were last decent radios. You need a restored 1950s to 1990s radio to have decent radio.

I buy old phone chargers at 50cents in charity shop when I need a project power supply or replacement psu. I just change the plug on the DC cord.

Little motors are good to use in parts for DIY kits for kids or servos of older people's projects.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Little electric motors? I have a box of over a hundred, but may as well chuck 'em for all the good they are.

You could add motor to this
30 Notes DIY Hand Crank Music Box Movement+Puncher+ 3 Strips for Your Songs Gift
Or even make one out of junk

They do actually have a model that has a built in motor. Oddly I can't find a wind up version like the regular cylinder & peg music box mechanisms which are from about $4 inc postage.