a little bit longer than infrared if we go a little bit farther over longer than infrared we're gonna have microwaves and there's one more category that's longer than that but we'll talk about that one next time let's just finish up with microwaves here have you ever heard of microwaves before have you heard of microwaves before give me a yes or a No and while you're doing that I'll write out the range microwave is any light between one millimeter and about ten centimeters so microwave is any light with you know like about that to about that in on your own body right yeah you've heard about it in a microwave oven right so microwave the type of light that microwave ovens use to cook food is microwave light right um now that said okay what is more dangerous if you have an equal amount of two beams of light and one of them was infrared and one of them was microwave which one would be the most dangerous to you his infrared light or microwave light in general more dangerous so that's exactly what I was expecting to hear because the whole reason I answered or I asked this question is there's a big misconception that pretty much everybody has infrared light in general with an equal amount is more dangerous than microwaves and visible light is even more dangerous than either of those guys why would visible light be the most dangerous of these three types of light it's because of one of the properties one of the three properties yes actually somebody said it kind of in in another thing it's the energy level so the in general the higher the energy of light the more dangerous it is it can have a bigger impact on you essentially so visible light is the most dangerous of these three we're gonna see more than or even higher energy next time that are even more dangerous than visible but you probably think of microwaves being the most dangerous because everybody's real scared of the microwave oven and they should be because just being less dangerous doesn't mean not dangerous okay but we'll get to that in a second with that in mind let me let me point out one other thing can you tell which color of light is the most dangerous color of light for your eyes which color of visible light is the most dangerous violet light violet light is the most dangerous that's why if you look at you know you probably have heard of black lights before black lights aren't really black they're that bright bright violet purple color right and they kind of hurt like we've ever stared at one don't stare at them but if you did it kind of hurts to look at them that's because that that light that's coming out is very high-energy and your eyes are reacting to that whereas red is the least dangerous kind of light that's why red light is used in a lot of situations where we don't want to have the light affect things as much like in a dark room for like developing photography it's frequently in red light there so that you can see but because red light is the lowest energy it won't damage the the photo the film as much as the other kinds of light but yeah so microwaves if they're less dangerous than these other types of light then what what causes them to cook food it's gonna be tied into something we're talking about next time but for now I'm gonna go ahead and tell you this every substance like water or oxygen or arsenic or or or anything every substance has certain wavelengths it really really really really likes to absorb and it turns out that water very common substance you probably have heard of water before right water has one wavelength of microwaves that it really really really really likes so that if your water and that wavelength comes along it will grab that light and absorb it and here's the thing because water likes that wavelength so much it doesn't matter that it's a very low energy it's gonna take in a lot of that wavelength and any time it absorbs that wavelength what will happen to its temperature if you've got a particle of water right here and it absorbs light it will get higher right it will get hotter so if you design a box to shine that one wavelength than any water you put in that box will absorb that one wavelength and even though that wavelength is not very high energy it'll absorb so much of it that it'll still get hot now that's your microwave oven so here's the thing why does a microwave oven work well what does all food have in it what does all food have in it that would help a microwave oven to cook it what substance is in basically all the food water right so basically what happens in a microwave oven is the the light in there is not dangerous for stuff that isn't water okay but because food has water in it those microwaves will go through the food harmlessly until it hits water and then it gets absorbed and it will cause the water inside the food to heat up and that water doesn't want to stay hot so it will try to give off that heat to the rest of the food so the food gets cooked from the inside out by its own water and that's also why it's dangerous for a human being okay that one wavelength of microwave light is dangerous to a human being because what's inside of a human being what's inside of every one of us what is our body mostly made out of yeah we're water we're water right we're made of lots of water so it turns out that because our water has our body has so much water in it we would also cook if you shine that one wavelength of microwave all the other wavelengths are basically harmless in general microwave is harmless but there's one single wavelength that because we have water in us our body would like to absorb in high amounts which will cook us from the inside okay so don't get into your microwave it's a bad idea final point I want to make for today a regular oven uses infrared to cook food you can tell that because a regular oven feels hot inside a microwave oven uses microwaves a regular oven uses infrared which type of oven a regular oven using infrared or a microwave oven using microwaves which one takes more electricity to run which one takes more electricity to run a regular oven with infrared or a microwave oven with microwaves so it turns out it's the normal oven it's the regular normal oven here's my last question of the day why why why is it that a regular oven using infrared would take more well it doesn't oh so yeah okay some Hubbins are gas powered but I'm still talking about energy so maybe not more electricity but it would take more energy no matter what you're making to run and the answer is it's because yeah infrared is a higher energy light so it takes more energy to run it whether the whether that's in the form of electricity or gas it would take more to run the infrared because it's a higher energy that's why the one of the reasons that microwaves were invented because they run on less electricity over the same period of time than a regular oven