Before I began writing this article, I quickly melted some ice in a microwave. If you want to skip this article, then, go ahead and take my word for it or go melt some yourself. Or use your common sense. Of course, ice melts in a microwave. Yet, there are YouTube videos where presenters show ice ‘refusing’ to melt in a microwave. How can this be? Certainly, ice will always melt in a microwave. If you’re curious about what’s going on, then read on.
Microwaves Aren’t Nuclear Furnaces
The efficiency of a microwave oven tends to make people think that putting something in a microwave is akin to placing it on the surface of the sun. They expect ice to not only melt, but to melt in a matter of nanoseconds, virtually in no time at all. It doesn’t.
Nevertheless, what’s going on is that these videos are fake. One such video is on the channel Impossible Science. The presenter starts the video with a long and elaborate ‘scientific’ explanation about why a microwave cannot melt ice.
He explains how microwaves heat food and then he explains that when water freezes, the water molecules stop moving around and cluster close together, where their attraction creates very strong hydrogen bonds.
If you’ve read the article I linked above, you know that microwaves work by exciting the water molecules, imparting energy to them, and increasing their rotation, which creates heat. This heat then cooks the food through conventional conduction.
So, according to the video, since the molecules are all jumbled together in a crystalline arrangement with tight hydrogen bonds, the microwaves can’t excite them and make them rotate like little Tasmanian devils, so therefore, the microwave can’t melt the ice.
He also says something during the video about there being a (mysterious) reason for the defrost settings (there isn’t..they are just lower power), but doesn’t seem to mention this again. This is a good example of text-bridging.
Anyway, before beginning his experiment, he explains that you must remove the rotating glass plate because (insert some needless explanation here, there’s a reason for this continued elaboration) glass will indeed heat up in the microwave and this heat will then melt the ice.
He puts two plastic containers in the microwave, one with water and the other with ice cubes. You will notice that in all such videos, there is a container of water.
The container of water seems to be some type of ‘control’ to show you that, in the end, the water heats up, so the microwave must be working, but the ice doesn’t melt! At other times, the water is there to show you that the water reaches a boil before the ice melts.
In reality, this water control is just a prop as you don’t need a control to show that the ice does not melt. It would be much easier to do an off-camera switch than to disable the microwave in such a way that it appears to be working and sounds like it’s working but isn’t.
Back to the video, he puts both containers in at the same time, without the glass plate, and puts them in for two minutes. Not on defrost, as far as I can tell, even though he mentioned the defrost setting for some reason.
Two minutes later, he takes out both containers and, of course, the water is much hotter but the ice, while warmer (he checks it with an infrared thermometer), is not melted. The experiment is not one continuous camera shot. Interpret that as you will.
I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened here but we could take an easy guess. He simply switched some nonmelted ice with the ice that would have certainly melted, at least mostly, after two full minutes in the microwave, especially since there was water heating up next to it and thus transferring heat to the air in the microwave, and perhaps even steam.
Unless this was magic ice or something quite extraordinary is going on, I would presume that this video, like all such videos, is fake. If he had just tried to melt some ice in a microwave at the beginning instead of two or three minutes of a scientific explanation designed to pre-influence you that his experiment must indeed be valid, he would never have gotten any views on this video.
As Food Scientist Ann Reardon said, speaking on another fake YouTube video demo, mixing the truth in with the lies makes it harder to distinguish what’s real from what’s fake: It must all be true!
As I said at the beginning, ice will melt pretty quickly in a microwave, especially on the regular high setting, no matter what type of container you put it in and whether you remove the glass plate.
All the scientific blah-blah just doesn’t matter, here, as the evidence speaks for itself (just try it). But I’ll offer a bit of explanation, anyway.
See, as soon as you remove ice from the freezer, the surface starts to melt, just a little. And when you put it into a container, even a plastic one, well, that’s gonna melt the ice contacting the surface just a little bit.
Even the tiniest bit of free water will be quickly ‘excited’ by the microwaves and they will then quickly impart heat to the ice next to them, which will quickly start melting, and getting excited, and melting some more ice…it’s a chain reaction.
There are a number of fanciful science articles that explain why it’s ‘so difficult’ to melt ice in a microwave. One such article even claims that the water will tend to boil first:
Although it only takes an increase of a few °C to melt the ice, and the water has to heat up by about 80°C to boil, the water will normally boil before the ice melts!
It’s as if they didn’t even try this. I’m not sure how they define ice melting. Depending on the amount of water, it may boil before all the ice melts, but the ice will certainly be well on its way to melting completely. And you must use the same amount of water to ice by weight for this to even work at all.
Alas, these types of explanations are about subverting our expectations and making us think the world is so much more interesting than it sometimes is but there is not much to be excited about, here.
There are many people who want to believe this so badly they will ‘confirm’ ridiculous claims with their own experiment. For example, there is one lady, who usually makes ASMR videos, who placed an ice cube on a piece of salmon and covered it with parchment paper before heating it in the microwave.
When done, the ice cube was completely intact so she tossed it aside. This is balderdash but it didn’t stop folks from claiming to have duplicated it.
Most people will easily confirm that ice melts in a microwave but some are surprised that it melts so slowly. The fascination here is that the ice doesn’t melt at once, immediately. That’s true, but it melts pretty quickly. It takes a lot of energy to melt the ice and if you’ve ever heated something frozen, I don’t really know why you’d be surprised that ice doesn’t turn into a puddle in a nanosecond.
Regardless, the point is that you cannot avoid melting ice in a microwave. But, why make a YouTube video proving that ice melts in a microwave?
Lying sells! And, why write an article debunking it? Well, it makes me feel better. And now you will not likely be pre-influenced by such scientific flourishes in the future.