Popped Popcorn

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Word Count: 782

The sun shines radiantly upon the towering stadium at the corners of Michigan and Trumball.  Spring has arrived and erased the dreary, grey weather of winter.  The old dilapidated stadium will come to life in a couple of hours to mark the beginning of an anticipated season.  
Brringg!   The bell signals the end of class and I anxiously wait for my mother to arrive.  I find myself impatiently glancing at the clock every two minutes; finally the car pulls up.  I jump into the back seat and throw off my heavy backpack.  As my mom pulls away, the same old raspy voice can be heard over the radio.  I try to block out the blaring AM station, but the word opening day grabs my attention.  The weatherman forecasts a sunny day with a cool breeze.  A smile erupts on my face, which my mom cant help but notice through the reflection of the rearview mirror.  
I arrive home and hurriedly run up the steps.  Stacks of baseball cards and other memorabilia blanket the floor beneath me.  I throw off my grade school uniform and find my clothes nicely folded on top of the dresser.  I slip on a pair of jeans, but cant figure out which shirt to wear.  I take a seat on my bed and slowly contemplate which Tigers T-shirt I should wear.  Looking at them brings back memories of past visits to Tiger games.  I begin to reminisce, however my daydreaming is short-lived and terminated by the ringing chimes that signal the arrival of my other fifth-grade friends.  I quickly grab any shirt and put on my broken-in baseball cap while running downstairs.  My friends and I load the car and we pull away from my house.  At last were on our way.
We arrive at the stadium among a frenzy of other fans.  As I step out of the car, my body shakes with a chilling flash of excitement.  I rub down the goose bumps that graze my arms and nervously reach into my pocket to find my ticket.  Its still there, but a light film of sweat still covers my palms.  Even though we are a few blocks from the stadium, a buzz penetrates the air.  Judging by the deafening cheers of the crowd, we know the game has already started.  As I glance at the shaking stadium during each wild wave of applause, my steps increase ever so slightly in anticipation.
Hot dog vendors, ticket scalpers, and souvenir shops line up the streets leading to the stadium.  My friends and I take our place in the lengthy line, along with the other excited fans.  The line never seems to move, but finally we reach the gate.  Upon entering the gate, the aroma of grilled hot dogs and freshly popped popcorn becomes more overpowering.  Despite the various aromas, Im captivated by the distinct smell of freshly mown grass.  We squirm our way through the growing crowds outside each section.  I trip on a clowns long red shoe and fall to the cement.  My hand falls down among cotton candy, peanuts, and beer spilt on the ground.  We continue on our way and finally reach our section.  As I walk down the steps to our seats, I wonder when the maintenance crew last cleaned these sticky steps.  A sound like the detachment of velcro marks each lift of my shoe.  We fight our way through the traffic, and finally take our seats behind the home teams bench alongside the first base line.  I gaze around the stadium and notice almost every seat occupied.  Colorful signs, banners, and confetti spot the bleacher seats high on the upper deck.
The game progresses slowly and the teams remain scoreless into the ninth inning.  The home crowd remains hopeful and tries to pump up the players with a thunderous cheer.  I scream to the top of my lungs and wave my colorful hankie.  However, a tremendous crack of the bat silences the stunned crowd.  A long ball goes way back, clearing the towering wall in center field.  The previous rumbling crowd now sits silently, while the visiting team celebrates their victory.  
We slowly exit the stadium along with the disappointed crowd.  As ... more

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Microwaves

You might remember the heroic role that newly-invented radar played in the  Second World War. People hailed it then as “Our Miracle Ally”.        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 which they are concentrated in a narrow beam, is one reason why they can be used in cooking. You can produce a high-powered microwave beam in a small oven, but you can’t do the same with radio waves, which are simply too long.   Microwaves and their Use  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.         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.        Microwaves and infrared rays are related in that both are forms of  electromagnetic energy.  Both consist of electric and magnetic fields that rise and fall like waves on an ocean.  Silently, invisibly and at the speed  of light, they travel through space and matter.        There are many forms of electromagnetic energy (see diagram). Ordinary light from the sun is one, and the only one you can actually see.  X-rays are another.  Each kind, moving at a separate wavelength, has a unique effect on any matter it touches. When you lie out in the summer sun, for example, it’s the infrared rays that bring warmth, but ultraviolet radiation that tans your skin. If the Earth’s protective atmosphere weren’t there, intense cosmic radiation from space would kill you.      So why do microwaves cook faster than infrared rays?      Well, suppose you’re roasting a chicken in a radar range.  What happens is that when you switch on the microwaves, they’re absorbed only by water  molecules in the chicken. Water is what chemists call a polar molecule. It  has a slightly positive charge at one end and a slightly negative charge at  the opposite end. This peculiar orientation  provides a sort of handle for  the microwaves to grab onto. The microwaves agitate the water molecules  billions of times a second, and this rapid movement generates heat and cooks  the food.         Since microwaves agitate only water molecules, they pass through all  other molecules and penetrate deep into the chicken. They reach right inside  the food. Ordinary ovens, by contrast,  fail to have the same penetrating  power because their infrared waves agitate all  molecules. Most of the  infarred radiation is spent heating the air inside the oven, and any  remaining rays are absorbed by the outer layer of the chicken. Food cooks in  an ordinary oven as the heat from the air and the outer layer of the food  slowly seeps down to the inner layers.        In short, oven microwaves  cook the outside of the chicken at the same time as they cook the ... more

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