But even in its earliest years, as it was helping win the war, radar proved to be more than an expert enemy locator. Radar technicians, doodling away in their idle moments, found that they could focus a radar beam on a marshmallow and toast it. They also popped popcorn with it.

Such was the beginning of microwave cooking. The very same energy that warned the British of the German Luftwaffe invasion and that policemen employ to pinch speeding motorists, is what many of us now have in our kitchens. It's the same as what carries long distance phone calls and cablevision.

Hitler's army had its own version of radar, using radio waves. But the trouble with radio waves is that their long wavelength requires a large, cumbersome antenna to focus them into a narrow radar beam. The British showed that microwaves, with their short wavelength, could be focussed ina narrow beam with an antenna many times smaller. This enabled them to make more effective use of radar since an antenna could be carried on aircraft, ships and mobile ground stations.

This characteristic of microwaves, the efficiency with w

The idea of cooking with radiation may seem like a fairly new one, but in fact it reaches back thousands of years. Ever since mastering fire, man has cooked with infrared radiation, a close kin of the microwave.

So why do microwaves cook faster than infrared rays?

Finally, as anyone who owns a microwave oven knows, you never put an empty container inside a radar range. Since nonpolar materials such as plastic and glass don't warm up in the presence of microwaves, there will be nothing in the oven to absorb the radiation. Instead, it will bounce back and forth against the walls of the oven, creating an electrical arc that may burn a hole in the oven. This hushed energy, electromagnetic radiation, flows all around us. All forms of matter, even your own body, produce electromagnetism -- microwaves, x-rays, untraviolet rays. It may interest you to know that whereas the human eye is sensitive to light radiation, the eye of the snake can sense infrared. Your body emits infrared radiation day and night, so snakes can see you even when you can't see them.

Infrared rays are what give you that warm glow when you put your hand near a room radiator or a hotplate or a campfire. Infrared rays, flowing from the sun and striking the atmosphere, make the Earth warm and habitable. In a conventional gas or electric oven, infrared waves pour off the hot elements or burners and are converted to heat when they strike air inside and the food.

Industry employs microwaves heat in many ways -- to dry paints, bond plywood, roast coffee beans, kill weeds and insects, and cure rubber. Microwaves trigger garage door openers and burglar alarms. The new cellular car phone is a microwave instrument.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that our exposure to electromagnetic radiation increases by several percent a year. Look around you. The modern landscape fairly bristles with microwave dishes and antennae. Here again, in telecommuncations, it is the convenience with which microwaves can be focused in a narrow beam, that

Some common words found in the essay are:
German Luftwaffe, University Equipping, Protection Agency, University Guelph, Miracle Ally, Microwaves Body, , infrared rays, water molecules, War People, narrow beam, air inside, radio waves, radar range, agitate water molecules, agitate water, cook outside, microwaves agitate, electromagnetic radiation, absorbed water molecules, forms electromagnetic energy, microwaves agitate water,
Approximate Word count = 1368
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)