Scientific types..explain this to me..

[SoCalDem]

ants have invaded my kitchen today..I am killing them with windex (I have kitties)..anyway..one was on the side of my coffee cup when I nuked it..the damn ant LIVED.. 2 minutes on high in the microwave..:wtf:

[TheWizardOfMudd]

1. Your microwave is broken

Secondary only to your habits, which should never have allowed you to put an ant in your microwave oven. Have you no mercy for the lesser creatures?

[Brahma Bull]

2. You should've put it in for 4 minutes.

They aren't done in two. :)

[Guaranteed]

3. Microwaves only heat water.

There must not be much water in ants.

[GAspnes]

4. sounds like

your microwaves are low. You may need to recharge your oven. Go to the hardware store and ask for a bottle of microwave recharger. Recharger comes in a can like a spray can, but it contains compressed microwaves. When you spray it into your oven the microwave reservoir will refill and then you should be able to nuke ants without any problems.

If the problem is defective microwaves, there's a microwave adjustment tool (be sure to get the titanium one, not the plastic one) which, when waved in front of the oven while it is turned on, will correct the defective microwaves.

If you have macrowave pollution, the only solution is to replace the oven. Note: Macrowaves are VERY dangerous, since they can escape and hide under your couch.

[pauliedangerously]

11. Don't bother with the hardware store...

you can get partially used cans of microwave recharger on Ebay for about a fourth of the price at the hardware store.

[GAspnes]

15. true, but

those tend to contain older microwaves which may not be compatible. Check before you buy, and be sure to send the seller your credit card and soc sec numbers.

[patriotvoice]

5. Ants aren't uniformly moist; neither are cockroaches. They both survive.

E.g., if you don't believe me.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_025.html

[Dookus]

6. actually....

the problem is an ant is so small, very few microwaves actually hit it while it's walking around. Now if you take a BOX of ants and put 'em in they'll heat up real good :P

[yellowdawgdem]

7. The ant must be a repub /nt

[LastDemocratInSC]

8. It's not a matter of water ... it's a matter of null spots

There are areas in your microwave oven at which the microwave radiation cancels out. That's why most recipes recommend "rotating half-way through" the cooking cycle. If you don't rotate you'll often notice cold spots in the casserole. If you had moved your cup a bit in any direction that ant may have gotten toasted.

It's interesting that this can also demonstrate the velocity of light. Put a bunch of little marshmallows on a paper towel. Nuke them in the microwave for 20 seconds or so. Take them out and measure the distance between those that have ballooned up (gotten hot). Many of them will remain smaller because they are in the null spots. Then, look on the back of the microwave and get the frequency being used (2.4 GHz, or so). Then, with a calculator, you can use the distance between bloated marshmallows, and the frequency, and derive how long it takes for the microwave energy to traverse that distance.

This experiment can also be conducted with a paper towel covered with ants, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the student.

[Donkeyboy75]

14. Bingo.

Although you could, if you wanted to be cruel, put a few glasses of water in the microwave. Boiling the water converts it to vapor form...and molecules in the gas phase will move with a much higher velocity in your nuke box...distributing the temperature more evenly and slowly steaming the ant.

I answered this out of scientific curiosity, not because I want to see ants tortured. ;)

[Guaranteed]

17. That's right...the microwave actually cooks better

from the outermost part in. In the dead center of your microwave, the power is very, very low. I think it has something to do with the rotating thing at the top, and the fact that it rotates faster on the outside than the inside.

[physioex]

9. Here is one theory....

And I deduce this from the same reason cockroaches are more apt to survive a nuclear attack. The cells of these creatures are not the same as humans. Their cell nucleus smaller which means that a ray of radiation has less probablity of a strike compared to a human cell. Thus it takes longer to kill an ant in a microwave as compared to a human....

[aquart]

10. I use Windex, too.

But I do not microwave ants. I am a grasshopper and I respect ants.

[SoCalDem]

12. I did not do it intentionally.. honest !!

as the thingie started to go round, I looked through the glass window and saw the ant on the side of my cup.. I expected him to die, but he's a trooper.. He's still in the microwave :)

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. You likely screwed up its DNA, though

you should breed that ant, and see what the offspring look like. Although with ants, you can't really breed them, so it's a moot point.

But if you nuke things like flies, which don't have queens, and not so much that you kill them, you'll get horribly deformed offspring.

[leftofthedial]

16. what you need is a gang of really mean grasshoppers

[SoCalDem]

18. My crazy kitties will eat grasshoppers, spiders, mosquitos, but NOT ants

I knew we should have taken in those feral anteaters instead..:(

[Spinzonner]

19. When you're through with your anticide experiments

try this:

http://pages.tipking.com/pests/tip_148.shtml

[ScrewyRabbit]

20. Slightly aside, but...

try killing them with salt water. I used it to wash away their little ant trails, but I quickly found it kills the little buggers, too.

This has nothing to do with microwaves, of course...

[Catshrink]

21. Put white vinegar in a spray bottle

and let 'em have it. They won't survive that. It's actually a good cheap way to get rid of ants. Dump a cupful on an anthill and they are toast.

[yellowdawgdem]

23. vinegar is truly a cure-all

Seems to work for just about everything. Specially that apple cider vinegar, though not for killing ants. Good luck with losing those ants though.

[Syrinx]

22. Funny, the ants officially invade me today too

And I'm about 3,000 miles away. I think they have a worldwide communications network. :)

[JM]

24. AntFax

It allows them to coordinate. The ants stole the technology from American religious institutions. ClergyFax allows clergy in different places to give nearly the identical sermon at the same time.

JM