Someone told me that apparently kids are now sticking their heads into microwave ovens to get some sort of a buzz off of it. has anyone else heard this rumour?

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I certainly haven't. o_O How the hell do you get a high off that?

dunno...someone mentioned it to me at work...nothing would surprise me

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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

I don't think COOKING your brain will get you high. In fact, I'll send this to Snopes.

what's Snopes?

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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi What I found using google

I imagine it might actually work - via a rise in temperature. I know when I have a fever I feel 'high'.

And, as is common, the process of obtaining a high is insanely stupid and dangerous

Heating the brain beyond ~ 106 F, usually leads to death in short order. It denatures proteins when you heat them. The TV commercial with the hot fat in the frying pan, then the eggs in the frying pan....and they turn white, opaque, rubbery...instead of colorless, and transparent "whites", with opaque yellow yolks...is an example of a denatured protein. That's what cooking your brain will do for you. I used that specific example in my chemistry class since about 1978. All the prayers in the world will not turn your cooked eggs back to what they were...it's a classic example of an irreversible reaction. This is how the environment selects out of the gene pool....evolution in action. Ciao. Pete.

exactly - though in more detail than I provided.

Doing ANYTHING to your body that doesn't need to be done is just plain stupid. Might as well juggle live handgrenades - eventually, one of them is going to go off.

(speaking as an ex-smoker and ex-drinker and current eater of way too much sugar)

This is by far the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I mean, who in the hell figured this out? And how? O_O(that is if it even works..)

On the other hand, if you heat up some kind of drug, stick your head in the microwave, and inhale, it might get you high.

And in any case, a microwave is designed not to operate with the door open.

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Moose - sure, but failsafes can be defeated. I've done it any number of times on numerous hunks of equipment. They're there to prevent *accidental* activation of the device.

No way. That has to be a false story. You can't turn a microwave on with the door open and despite what Lurch says, that would be some pretty sophisticated tinkering. I doubt a kid stupid enough to try such a thing would be smart enough to do such a thing.

What I find interesting is who starts these rumors? Someone has to be the first and know they are making it up. Everyone else just repeats it. We should start one that is different enough to know it came from us and then see how many places it ends up being repeated in and how fast. It would be a fun experiment.

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Banquo, your memory is slipping. We've quoted Snopes many times on the BABB.

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BeSkeptical -

I don't mean to imply it would be *easy*, just doable. I admit I've never tried to disable the falesafes on a microwave, but it shouldn't be all that difficult. There is only (essentially)one way to tell if the door is open - open circuit. It's far safer to install a microswitch or two than it is to run a current through the door and latch system. The micro switch has to be in one of three places: Hinges, latch, or separate physical switch along the doorframe. Disabling them really shouldn't be all that difficult, now that I give it a few seconds of thought, since there's probably only the one.

Keep in mind, the possible users of this 'feature' probably don't care much if they damage the shell and appearance of appliance - probably don't care if the microwave works for any of its intended uses, either.

taking it even one step farther - removing the magnetron is not all that difficult, either. If there's any truth in the story at all, it's quite possible some Joe pulled the magnetron and used just that - getting high off the damage microwaves, rather than a microwave

As Adam and Jamie would say: it's plausible

While I too hope this is bogus, I would also like to point out that there's a REAL short trip between making something "failsafe" and "idiot proof".

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Without Mommy and Daddy finding out about it? These are supposedly kids "huffing" their microwave on the sly.

Completely implausible.

If I were designing a microwave (with my Mad Lay Person skillz), I'd consider a design where the faraday cage had a small current though it when the microwave received the command to start, with the door physically closing the connection while closed. So long as that current exists, the microwave is safe to use.

If the current is broken, either the cage is damaged or the door is open, and thus the microwave should not fire up.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

I have no idea if you could "get high" using one, but I'm sure the safety interlocks on many microwaves could be defeated. Here's a page where somebody modified a microwave oven so he could put vacuum tubes in it and tape the effects:

http://apache.airnet.com.au/~fastinfo/microwave/valve/

Check any microwave oven manual and it will warn you not to attempt to defeat the safety switches.

Darn it all. Now I'm tempted to do it, just for demonstration purposes. Back, foul temptation! Back I say!

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Moose - I did think about running a small current- but the possibility of somehow shocking the customer rules it out as a marketable concept, I think.

I went downstairs a bit ago and looked at my Sharp microwave. Took the cover off. found the single interlock. could, but didn't, disable it with a pair of wire cutters and a wirenut. Put the cover back on. There isn't even a 'tamper-proof seal on the outside'

I'm inclined to support Lonewulf's interpretation of the story - that the kids put a cup of solvent (or something with a volatile solvent in it) into the microwave, heat it up, open the door and inhale the fumes.

and I'm just going to wander over to my microwave and poke around the door switch.... I may be some time...

I, too, find that feasible...

and neener neener neener, I tinkered first!

Don't confuse ingenuity and intelligence. When it comes to figuring out ways to get high, there are a lot of resourceful idiots. Think about how often you here about kids/people doing some stupid thing in the quest to get high and the first reaction is "what kind of idiot would try something like that?" then,"How did they figure out that would get them high?"

Of course I also don't believe any one is actually doing this, it becomes believable because of previous stories about what people are willing to do to get high.

I’ve wanted to start a rumor for a while, I guess I’m either not bright enough to come up with one, or so despise those folks in my office that believe every stupid little email that comes through their inbox I can’t bring myself to put any effort into it.

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Sure, interlocks can be defeated, but the question is if it is an easy task to do so, so that it can easily be done without opening the oven. Ovens generally have three switches. The primary and secondary interlocks will open when the door is opened; these are there to prevent accidental activation when the door is opened. The third, the interlock monitor(or was it idiot monitor? ), is a funny little thing, it will switch from the high voltage transformer primary circuit to an intentional short circuit when the door is opened, it is generally not easily defeatable without opening the oven(may be hard to locate even then), and will blow the fuse(s) on the oven if someone tries to defeat the primary and secondary interlocks while the door is open, rendering the oven inoperable and hopefully scare the person from any further attempts at operating an oven with the door open.

As for getting high... Well, I do not know if it would work, but it would probably not be a good idea to try.

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Hmm..

Good on 'ya, Lurch. Two out of three ain't bad.

"Attack the Glucons! Man your battlestations!!!"

I understood your post. My point is that such a claim is so absurd, where's our skepticism here? While disabling a microwave door latch safety might be plausible, the story is not. Unless there was some reference to an original source, I take the position that this is BS rather than it is plausible. Cite an original source and I'll start considering how the story might be plausible.

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Hrm. y'know.. going back over it all, I'm inclined to revise my stance a little here. It's certainly POSSIBLE to defeat the interlocks, and not really all that difficult (at least, not on my microwave). But "plausible" that kids are doing it to get high? No, I doubt it.

Also, I seem to recall reading... or hearing, that microwaves will vitrify the aqueous humor of the eye - rather rapidly. Anybody have input on that?

My guess would be, that putting your head in an
active microwave oven would kill you in seconds.

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And don't confuse the desire to "get high" with stupidity. After all, there was a period of time that Malcolm X was a druggie... but he proved to be a rather intelligent fellow, did he not?

Yes but getting high via stupid means is different from getting high per se. I see you are responding to a different post than mine but I wanted to point out, we aren't talking about getting high necessarily, we are talking about cooking your head. Anyone could see that cooking one's head could be expected to occur if one put their head in a microwave. Maybe people are dumb enough to think the microwave would dry their dog's wet hair, but to cook your head to get high? I don't think so.

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