Superheated Water Explodes in Microwave

This was conducted to show that water that is superheated in a microwave oven can explode without any outside disturbance. The disturbance that finally causes the explosion is a gas bubble, but this comes long after the water is superheated. You could very easily stop the microwave prior to explosion, open the door and this explosion would occur when you grab the glass and the surface tension of the water is broken from the slight sloshing motion, etc. This is very dangerous - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DUPLICATE!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• superheated water
• microwave
• explosion
• water
• explode

[pcorf]

Yesterday I mixed a bit of hand soap in tap water and microwaved it for a few minutes. It started to boil and then suddenly it exploded with a very loud bang when it got superheated and blew the door open leaving one heck of a big mess inside the microwave and also my right arm was drenched in warm soapy water. Now the microwave was spotless as the explosion cleaned it.

[skubapjones]

This happened to me by accident, I was heating filtered fridge water in a Pyrex measuring cup and got distracted after the timer went off so I hit the quick minute to get the boil back but nothing happened so hit the quick minute again thought my microwave was broke because there was no boil and then bang the water exploded just like this video scared the …. Out of me. That’s when I Googled exploding water! Beware of microwaved water that does not boil!