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Could it be possible to heat the people in a house with long wavelength microwaves rather than heating all the air in the building ?
I can only imagine the physiological problems associated with that. Remember, normal heating of a person in a household comes from convective heating. The body is heated from the outside. With a microwave, the radiation will penetrate the entire body and heat up internal organs, blood, everything, all at once. I can't imagine that's any good :)
If it isn't excessive I don't see why it would be bad. I heat up my whole body just by going outside and running around.
Not using penetrating radiation. Consider this. A nice little room heater will run at around 1,000W. A microwave oven typically produces the same amount of power. Would you want to sit in a room with an exposed 1000W magnetron?
Something to consider: Many times the point of heating and cooling is just comfort. Heating someones body using microwaves just makes them feel like they just ran a mile and came into to the 50 degree AC cooled air. Not that pleasant in my opinion. Your body doesn't need to be heated up itself unless you have hypothermia, it just needs to be kept insulated.
I'm not sure if the premise of that last sentence is true, but even if it is, why would that be bad? You seem to be assuming the radiation would be excessive. I don't think that is a reasonable assumption. What if you assume the amount of heat absorbed is the same as with an IR radiative heater?I can only imagine the physiological problems associated with that. Remember, normal heating of a person in a household comes from convective heating. The body is heated from the outside. With a microwave, the radiation will penetrate the entire body and heat up internal organs, blood, everything, all at once. I can't imagine that's any good :)
I'm not sure if the premise of that last sentence is true, but even if it is, why would that be bad? You seem to be assuming the radiation would be excessive. I don't think that is a reasonable assumption. What if you assume the amount of heat absorbed is the same as with an IR radiative heater?
In fact, it seems to me that you may even have it backwards. But that's a biology issue, not a physics one...
Right, so if you are actually cold (your core body temp is a touch low), wouldn't it be better for the heat to penetrate a little? You could apply more heat without burning if you aren't just heating your skin.I think the issue is how you are heated. Microwaves would be able to penetrate and I would imagine IR radiation would get absorbed fairly quickly at the skin.