Microwave Duty Cycle
As you may know, when you change the power setting on most microwaves, it doesn’t change the power output of the magnetron. It changes the duty cycle, i.e. when the magnetron is on and when it is off.
In a bout of curiousity I sat down with my microwave today and figured out exactly what those duty cycles are (you can hear when the magnetron switches on and off). My microwave apparently has a cycle period of 32 seconds. High is power level 100 and the magnetron is on all the time. Power level 50 is on 18 seconds and off 14 seconds. Power level 40 is on 16 and off 16 (which I would have guessed would be the case for power level 50). Power level 10 (the lowest setting) is on for 6 seconds and off for 26 seconds. Here’s a graph with all 10 settings:
As you can see it’s more or less linear, which is nice because it makes mental visualization easy.
Now you know.
March 12th, 2009 at 15:33
But can you prove *my* microwave is *also* linear? Sounds like there’s more work to be done here… :)
March 12th, 2009 at 15:40
Not my problem. ;-)
March 13th, 2009 at 03:16
totally awesome. Now I’m gonna have to do that with my microwave…
March 24th, 2009 at 17:49
you are probably the biggest nerd I’ve ever met. :)
March 24th, 2009 at 17:57
But do you mean that figuratively or literally? Or both?
March 31st, 2009 at 22:04
[...] But one day, perhaps while waiting for a delicious TV dinner to thaw, he began thinking about magnetrons. The magnetron, you might know, is the device that zaps your food and warms it up by making the [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:53
[...] Microwave Duty Cycle | The Fugue [...]