Is It Safe To Stand in Front of The Microwave and Watch? The Answer

We’ve all heard it somewhere. “Don’t watch the microwave. You’ll go blind”. “Don’t stand in front of the microwave or it’ll cook you too”. We’ve all been scared by the old wives tale. So is it true? Mostly, no. And for your mother, or your grandmother, or your friend that doesn’t believe you, here’s the technical explanation.

As we all remember from chemistry class, every electromagnetic wave (Microwaves, x Rays, UV rays, Visible light, radio waves, etc.) has a wave length– a consistent length  from top to botom of each bump in the wave. We call them microwaves, but “microwaves” actually have wavelength between 1 mm, and one meter. Most microwaves in “microwave” ovens are at least 1 CM in wave length.

A closeup of the metal shielding sheet

Built into that seemingly transparent window in your microwave is a shield, a tiny perforated sheet of metal which can not be penetrated (see photo below). It has tons of of tiny holes that can let the far smaller visible light waves out so that you can see what your cooking, but the “microwaves” are so massive that they cannot penetrate the shielding, and are essentially trapped inside.

Barring a broken microwave (highly unlikely) you’re at no risk watching your popcorn pop, or your microwave pizza’s cheese bubble. In fact, in the microwave’s 50+ year run, there hasn’t been a single reported radiation casualty. So you’re safe.

Sources of this information:

Research for this report came from a chemistry textbook, Wolfram Alpha, Ken Jennings (Jeopardy Genius), and NASA.