Immune to microwaves?

[I don't like spam!]

On Mon, 23 Nov 1998 09:39:39 -0500, Robert Miller <stargazr at stc.net>
wrote:

>My wife recently bought a second hand microwave oven that just 
>happend to be infested with cockroaches.  With one small cockroach
>in the cooking chamber I closed the door pluged it into the wall 
>turned on the microwave oven.  After a few minutes the cockroach
>appeared to be unharmed.
>
>I was trained in electronics not biology so I can not understand
>why this small bug would not appear to be effected.  
>
>Can somebody give me the short answer why?
>
>Robert Miller
I believe this has been discussed in another newsgroup before, so I
repeat what I have heard:

The wavelength of microwave used in your standard oven is such that,
in order to be absorbed by an object and converted to heat, that
object must be of a certain, minimum size or mass. That minimum size
or mass happens to be larger than your average cockroach / ant / etc.
So, unless you are nuking a whole bowl of them, your roaches simply
wont get done in your microwave.