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Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100 °C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, stricly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has knots at a distance of $0.5c/f\approx6\ \mathrm{cm}$ (with $f=2.45\ \mathrm{GHz}$ and speed of light $c$ which of course is a bit less in your chicken), where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.

Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100 °C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, strictly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has knots at a distance of $0.5c/f\approx6\ \mathrm{cm}$ (with $f=2.45\ \mathrm{GHz}$ and speed of light $c$ which of course is a bit less in your chicken), where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.

Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100°C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, stricly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has knots at a distance of $0.5 c/f \approx 6\rm{cm}$ (with $f=2.45\rm{GHz}$ and speed of light $c$ which of course is a bit less in your chicken), where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.

Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100 °C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, stricly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has knots at a distance of $0.5c/f\approx6\ \mathrm{cm}$ (with $f=2.45\ \mathrm{GHz}$ and speed of light $c$ which of course is a bit less in your chicken), where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.

Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100°C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, stricly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has several knots, where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.

Heating water on a hot plate is safe, because the hottest point is at the bottom of the pot. A lot of relatively small bubbles appear there without much overheating of the water, because there is a lot of nucleation at the uneven phase boundary steel-water.

In a microwave, the hottest place is IN the water. The glass does not get heated by microwave (at least not much), and radiates off some heat to the surrounding.

Problem: In clean water, there are few good nucleation points to form bubbles, only some dust particles perhaps. So the water gets overheated rather strongly, and a first bubble that appears can grow a lot before it has cooled its surroundings down to 100°C. That one huge bubble can throw most of the water out of the glass. It boils over, violently.

Btw. a microwave does not heat its content uniformly. It forms a standing electromagnetic wave (that's not radiation, stricly speaking) in the oven, like a rope swung quickly between two people, or a guitar string. The wave pattern has knots at a distance of $0.5 c/f \approx 6\rm{cm}$ (with $f=2.45\rm{GHz}$ and speed of light $c$ which of course is a bit less in your chicken), where there is very little heating. That's why the microwave oven has the rotating plate, to generate some uniform heating. For pure water, that doesn't matter, because convection sets in anyway and distributes the heat.