#microwaves

I regularly put things in the microwave at non-100% power. For example, this is apparently the secret to reheating things like pizza without the crust getting all gummy. It's also useful for soups, giving the hotspots time to even out and reduce the amount of spattering.

The problem is, I'll typically say to myself, "Hm, 60 or 90 seconds at full power sounds about right. So the equivalent on, say, 30% power is...?" and either plug it into a calculator (don't @ me) or do some rounding and go with that.

What I'd like is a direct way to tell the microwave, "Ok, I want the equivalent of 60 seconds, but over oh I don't know, five minutes," and let it figure out the power. After all (as far as I know) those % power settings are just approximate amounts of on/off time for the microwave horn to be active over the duration. (I don't think I've come across a microwave that actually throttles the intensity of microwave output.)

Contrarywise, I guess I could just draft up my own conversion chart and find what I'm looking for each time. But wouldn't the ability to program your own dang microwave, even a little bit, be nice?

Incidentally, the reason microwave windows have all those little holes in them is because microwave ovens generate microwaves with a wavelength of roughly 12cm. (The full microwave spectrum is defined as electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths between 1mm and 1m.) So, owing to an abundance of caution, the holes are made small enough to reasonably ensure none escape.

3D-printing electronics with focused microwaves redefines possibilities in materials

In a recently published paper in Science Advances, a team led by Rice University's Yong Lin Kong describes a new 3D-printing process with focused microwaves that overcomes a fundamental constraint of electronics 3D printing that has limited the field's potential for more than a decade: the inability to heat printed ink—a crucial processing step—without damaging the materials underneath. Limits of current electronics manufacturing The ability to integrate functional materials and spatially program their properties governs both device performance and the limits of what can be built. Existing manufacturing approaches are fundamentally limited in both respects. Electronic components, for instance, are fabricated in massive, centralized foundries, often decoupled from the final device. Integrating them requires complex, labor-intensive assembly that constrains both the form and the function of what can ultimately be created.