Create a glowing ball of plasma in your microwave with a grape!

I enjoy trying adventurous recipes and all sorts of other stuff in my kitchen now that I live in my own pad. Only if my mom had to know about all this! However I didn’t know that other than wine, grapes are capable of creating plasma too. The ingredients are - a microwave, a grape and some science; combine have fun! Put a standard green grape in the microwave and let the fireworks begin! Take a seedless grape and slice it lengthwise, making sure (this part is important) not to cut all the way through, so you leave a little bit of skin connecting the two halves. Lay it face-up and on the microwave for 15 seconds. Read on for an educative edge of this feat….

Grapes are full of electrolyte, an ion-rich liquid “grape juice” that conducts electricity. Each grape-half serves as a reservoir of electrolyte, connected together by a thin, weakly conducting path….the skin in this case. Microwaves cause the stray ions in the grape to travel back and forth very quickly between the two halves. As they do this, the current puts excess energy into the skin bridge, which heats up to a high temperature and eventually bursts into flame. At this point, the traveling electrons arc through the flame and across the gap, ionizing the air to a plasma (which itself can conduct electricity) and creating the bright flashes you see.