A magnetron for the kitchen

Cooking equipment in the home kitchen has gone through many refinements during the last twenty or thirty years but basically cooking itself has remained chained to the physical operation of placing the food in a hot environment be it air, steam, water or oil. With the availability of microwaves for cooking, the food can now be cooked in a cool environment. The microwave energy penetrates and is absorbed by the food to be cooked. The key word in microwave cooking is "penetrates," for that is where cooking with microwaves differs from the classical methods of food preparation. The microwave energy travels through the food much as radio waves travel through the atmosphere. The main difference is that microwaves lose energy in the form of heat as they pass through the food. In an oven the energy is reflected by the metal walls and so passes through the food many times, losing energy with each pass. In this manner most of the available energy is used to heat the foodstuff. The number of times the microwaves pass through the material depends upon its size and how much energy is absorbed in each pass. However, a wide variation in loads are easily handled by the microwave oven, the only factor being that the larger loads take a longer cooking time. Thus the magnetron contributes to a cooler, less time consuming, economical, more nutritious kitchen. The Amperex DX-206 cooking magnetron is a reliable, long lived source of microwave energy at a power level consistent with power supply requirements of light weight, small size and low cost.