My parents bought a microwave oven around 1980 or so, and it was enormous. It took up half the space of a counter, and was about three or four times the volume of the typical oven you can buy today. The advertised wonders of microwaves (cooking meals in minutes, heating up leftovers) were eclipsed for me and my friend Chris by our teenage scientific curiosity: what would happen if you left something in it for a long time?
Our first, and last, experiment involved an orange. We nuked it, and then nuked it again and again. And maybe again. I'm not sure.
By that point, the orange had become quite gross, and it stunk up the joint. Fortunately, not permanently. (The oven wasn't permanent, either; my mom returned it, and didn't come around to microwave use for many years, as I recall.)
The following video is actually a commercial for a company that is also a microwave skeptic, yet also prone for a little experiment or two. Moe's Southwest Grill bills itself for not using microwaves to cook their food. Why? Well, the video explains their cooking principles.
