yeah...its just stuff that promotes cancer you might try and avoid. its ok to eat food from a microwave 2 minutes after you take it out... because then the radiation is gone.

Doesn't that depend on it's half-life? Some materials have a half-life of over 700 million years, are you willing to wait that long to eat your microwaved chips?

Your food isn't radioactive(unless you like to munch on uranium) therefore half life has absoluty nothing to do with this. As Hedgemistress pointed out microwaving something is like boiling it in water. That and the half life's for various materials range from a few nano-seconds to a bit over 10^20 years. After the half-life is up it doesn't mean that the material isn't radioactive it just means it's hald decayed. The half remaining could still be radioactive.

Microwaving food doesn't make it radioactive... bathing something in radiation irradiates it, but that's not the same thing as making it radioactive. The microwave radiation moves at the speed of light (like all radiation does), it in no way lingers within the food... the only way it affects the food is when it strikes a molecule which happens to vibrate at the right frequency (water being the main one), that molecule is then excited, and that in turn excites the other molecules surrounding it.

Standing too close to a poorly shielded microwave isn't healthy... but the instant the microwave stops producing microwave radiation (i.e., the moment it dings), it and whatever food it has cooked are as safe as food cooked using a stove.

I must admit this has always made me nervous. How do you KNOW if it's poorly shielded or not? And how close is too close? I guess it depends on the microwave, and there's probably tests that can see if it's shielded well or not... but the tests are probably quite expensive, I'd imagine.

Here's a hint it's not the glass protecting you :). It's actually that thin sheet of metal forming hollow circles. The circles are the right size to prevent the microwaves from passing through.

That's funny, I remember reading a story about testing the shielding on microwaves and I don't remember what they found re: actual shieldedness or the long-term effects of poor shielding. :P I think the upshot was if you're not sticking your face up against the microwave door, you're probably ok.

If this is reassuring... the first microwave was invented when a radar technician noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket was melting when he stood too close to the radar tubes, despite the fact that very little heat was being given off.... and history doesn't record that the first radar operators died of cancer or anything.

Your body's mostly water... if you were getting a big enough dose of microwaves to hurt you, I would think you would notice.

Well, that's good to know. =) Thanks.

All that aside, I havent found any info on how its done...

Well, that's easy. You just reroute power from auxiliary life support through the main deflector dish, and cross-circuit to B.

There is no sure way to tell if your mom will survive or not, so I can't aid you there. Although, being a man of religion has helped me believe that everybody goes at one time or another, and even though a person is struck down with a terminal illness, there is a reason. Maybe your mom was meant to die within the next few years, and instead of her going instantly, you were in a way, lucky enough to know ahead of time. I know that might not sound "lucky" but knowing that she's dieing gives you time to make up everything to her in life before she goes, rahter thats if she goes. If she survives then your bonds with your mom will only grow deeper and stronger. I remember in a Theology class I was in a while ago, we watched a tape that was childishly dubbed, "Why bad things happen", and it talked about possible reasons for bad things, and it really focused on the possibility that sometimes really bad things happen to stop worse things from happening.

This all reminds me of a parable I once read, there were these 2 men going out to travel with each other, one man was a man of strong faith in God, the other was a total atheist. The two men went out on their travels and were becoming tired after a days worth of walking, so they dropped by a town and tried checking into the only inn within 30 miles, turns out that there was no vacancy, so the atheist sarcastically says, "Wow, your god must be looking out for us", and then the man of faith just says, "Surely there is a reason why God has chosen us not to stay here tonight.". So the men buy a donkey and use it to take them not to far out of town to build a small camp near some trees, and as they layed down to sleep a lion came out and killed their donkey, but the travelers made it up the tree before the lion got them. The atheist then looked at his fellow traveler and asked him, "If your God is so great why would he let the lion kill our donkey?", the man of God replied, "If the lion hadn't attacked the donkey first it would of surely killed us first.". One of the men had grabbed their lit torch whilst he made it up the tree, but a strong wind had started building up and flushed right through the trees, and blew their torch out. This caused the atheist to ask another question, "Surely there is no reason for your God to allow that to happen.", the man of God sighed and said, "There is a reason for what God has done.". The next day the men returned back to the small village, they went to grab some supplies but there was none left, a local villager tells them that last night there was a huge raiding party that attacked the city, and there were a few casualties and everybody was robbed of all their possessions. If the torch hadn't been blown out, the raiders would of surely seen them and got them too.(The story might seem a bit mixy, but I didn't memorize it or anything, and this is from a rather long time ago.)

I know that might not seem to be relevant to your mom and cancer, but if you think about the cause and effect it might make you feel better. I know how it is to lose a parent, I lost my father when I was much younger, although he committed suicide, and I had no time to make up with him before he died.