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by chrisbennet 4267 days ago
How to Blow Up Your Kitchen With Hydrogen Peroxide.

A few years ago, upon returning home after work, my my wife told me that her mother had blown blown up her kitchen but that she was OK. (My late mother-in-law was a wonderful person BTW.)

I can be prone to inattention when my wife speaks to me but this, this got my attention. :-)

My mother in law was an antique dealer. To restore/bleach old china, she would put some (hair dresser grade) hydrogen peroxide in in/on the china in question and let it warm in the oven.

One day she did this, but for some reason, this time she used her kitchen microwave instead of the oven. While it was warming she stepped out of her kitchen (to put something in the recycle I think) and luckily escaped the blast that blew out her kitchen window and sent her microwave into the Great Beyond.

When the fire department came she, I guess, feigned ignorance of what could have caused it. She was after all, a sweet old lady.

After my wife finished telling me the story, I mentioned something to the effect that "You realize they used hydrogen peroxide in the German V2 rockets?"

A picture of the remains of the destroyed microwave was displayed at her funeral.

R.I.P. ma

2 comments

Skimming comments before reading them all as I usually do it was hard not to notice the second last sentence in your comment: "A picture of the remains of the destroyed microwave was displayed at her funeral."

Certainly reddit /r/nocontext material.

That is really cool.

Any chemists care to comment on why the peroxide would explode in the microwave but not the oven?

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=166634...

These guy tested the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide across a range of microwave frequencies.

Since hydrogen peroxide decomposes when heated, I'm guessing it's just due to the microwaves heating the mixture.

microwaves are at the wavelength that 'excites' / 'wobbles' / 'resonates' (pick your analogy of ball and spring physics) the O-H bond. H2O is entirely O-H bonds (give or take) and hence microwaves heat food vicariously via the water in it (heating up day old rice from the fridge is easier/better if you put a few mL of water in it). Peroxide peroxide is H-O-O-H so plenty of O-H bonds to excite and hence decompose...