Things that Bother Me About Microwaves, Volume 1
on January 5, 2009 at 3:06 pmI’m sure this must be a well documented phenomenon, but bear with me:
Math on a standard consumer grade microwave does not make sense. Any entry of cooking time that is 99 or lower is counted by SECONDS, but any entry of 100 or higher is a count of MINUTES and seconds.
Can anyone explain to me how entering 75 will get me one minute and fifteen seconds just as I’d expect, but an entry of 100 gets me one minute? WHAT IF I WANT ONE MINUTE AND FORTY SECONDS, WHICH PERHAPS IS THE MAGIC COOKING TIME? Do you expect me to input 140? No! Because that SHOULD be two minutes and twenty seconds. WHAT HAS HAPPENED, MICROWAVE? You owe me forty seconds.
Okay, so: I know what you’re going to tell me. That the ability to enter time by seconds at 99 and under is a luxury afforded to us both by ease of design and that it allows more precise cooking time for things that might need to be cooked just over a minute when you only have time to enter TWO numbers and not THREE. 🙁
Well, I feel betrayed. Once you have three numbers in sequence, you have created a PATTERN. And microwaves, well, they’ve established a pattern with a series of 99 numbers. A pattern of entry by SECONDS. And then everything gets flipped upside down.
Life is a lie.
if you want the secret magic cooking time of 100 seconds, you must enter 70 seconds start the microwave and hit the add 30 seconds button, but dont tell anyone, its the only time where EVERYTHING you put into the microwave comes out as it went in…but warmer
*Puts gun to mouth*
Murflelef?
Woah… Take it easy man. I have went through the same confusing thing… About two years ago when I was in college it hit me. I don’t know if I have ever been right since, but things are getting better. Don’t worry… Life does get easier. It will still lie to you, but just be thankful that not every timed cooking device throws wild cards at you like this.
the only way to be safe is to have a analog timer on your Microwave. You know, the ones with the dials instead of the keypad. The numbering system makes much more sense there, but in my opinion it is not nearly as accurate. You can easily overshoot, or under turn the dial…
stick with the digital timers… despite the 100 second bug, or “Feature” as I like to call it.
Screw digital! Dials are king!
WANT CHEAP MICROWAVES? !
CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE. BUY MICROWAVES. MICROWAVES ARRIVE IN SMALL PACKAGE. OPEN PACKAGE NEAR FOOD THAT NEEDS TO BE WAMRED> ONE TIME USE ONLY.
NOT INTENDED FOR PREGNANT WOMEN OR YOUNG CHILD. KEEP AWAY FROM FOOD.
Try entering 60 seconds, hold down L1 and R1, tap X & O repeatedly. Warning: this only works after you’ve cooked 3 burritos in 750watt mode.
Maybe.
I think the easy solution might be to just remember that anytime entered after 99 goes into magical minute land.
Also, preheating the oven is a scam!
The dial really is worse; I was inches away from flipping out every time I tried to use the new microwave at my parents’ place over the holidays. Somehow I always turn the dial the wrong way first, that often happens to me with keys too… maybe my brain is in backwards?
I just want to say I’m so glad you guys keep posting comics.
You are fuuuuuunnnnnnyyyyyyyyy
What happens if you punch in 199?
Kind of off-topic, but the “secret link” for this comic (http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/ComicArchive/131.htm) has to be inspired by Jumbo’s.
@DogSpots
If you put in 199 you would get 2 minutes and 33 seconds.
…. I think…..
Great now I’m confused too.
Chris you’re close but it’s two minutes and 39 seconds. (99-60=39)
Also microwaves are very advanced technology so made we should start looking at the possibility that 60 does in fact equal 100.
Hooray for number system collisions.
There are typically 4 buttons: 10 minutes, 1 minutes, 10 seconds, 1 second.
The display doesn’t read seconds but rather the same nasty mix of minutes and seconds.
They do this because people aren’t really comfortable entering 3600 if they want to microwave their cat for an hour, the maths hurts their heads.
The french were right, decimal time is the way to go. Viva La Revolution!
My old home in Blackhawk, South Dakota was haunted by at least
three ghosts; a little girl who sings at night, a little old man who
sits at my fireplace and an unseen spirit that was in my old room.
Pretty crazy, huh?
The unseen spirit in my bedroom I had become good friends with. I
called him Lewis, and he responded quite well to the name too! All of
my friends thought I was making everything up until I said “Lewis,
please enter my room” soon enough, everything went cold and my lights
flickered. My friends were shaking with fear and I told them to be
unafraid. Now when they stayed the night, oh boy then things picked
up! This scared them to the point of leaving the sleepover!
At about midnight we walked out to get some food from the kitchen,
and, lo and behold, there was the little old man, sitting on the
fireplace! My friend Matt approached the old man and he disappeared.
Everyone was dumbfounded and awestruck at the sight of him. We
returned to the bedroom and watched some TV. I had felt Lewis in the
room so we felt pretty cool about him through the rest of the night.
This is the reason why they left; at midnight I began to hear the
windy voice of the little girl singing, and I told my friends to
listen closely. Then the singing became louder, and louder until we
could hear her voice at the doorway. Then the doorknob started to
jiggle wildly, Matt had opened the window and jumped out along with
my other two friends, they ran away to their houses! And that’s when
everything stopped. The ghosts are still around today, believe me! I
still want to return home to South Dakota so I can visit Lewis again.
Glad I’m not the only one to notice this
My Great-Grandmother had a microwave that cooked using only seconds. Meaning that if you wanted to cook something for oh, say 2:00 you had to input 120 seconds. I thought maybe you could set some goals and have something to live for.
I never use the number pad for microwaves, so I never encountered this problem. But I am lazy and just press the ‘add 30 seconds’ button a few times and then watch my food to see when it’s ready.
The best way to solve this problem though is to learn how to use a stove. It’s way better anyway.
This post was so very true that I was compelled to click a few times, type my name and email, and tell you all about it.
It frightens me when something that should make MORE sense as technology advances begins to make… less sense. I never truly grasped the ability to read an analog clock (and was harassed and pitied by both peers and teachers in elementary school). Therefore, a digital display would appear to be my tried-and-true friend. Yet, alas! THIS sort of thing happens. Also, on my stove, when you enter in “14” minutes, it understands it as “13 minutes and 60 seconds.” It automatically reduces the number you enter by one after only one second and counts down the seconds unseen. Then, shouldn’t it display “zero” minutes for one whole minute before your food is done!
CONFUSION.
You wanna get even crazier? Punch in the numbers 175 or something like that. Suddenly you have two minutes and fifteen seconds. You really can’t hold it against the microwave, they are an openly evil device. Anything that can ‘nuke’ chicken without harming the plastic bowl I put it in must’ve sold it’s soul to the devil.
That is, if microwaves ever had souls…
Because they are time machines, geez..
My microwave is really old fashioned, we’re talking OLD. It has a dial that you turn to the desired time. But you always need to set it a minute more that what the cooking time SHOULD be in a normal microwave, because it’s not so strong.
It happens that the programmers behind the microwave oven’s timer has to learn to behold to stupid people, the microwave is a dangerous appliance and it has to receive the less damage possible from the user, so, if somebody enters a crazy number in the timer, the controller has to make is best guess of what time the user intended to enter and start counting as it is so the user wouldn’t be pissed off. If the user got mad, the microwave would be damaged and the leaked microwaves will fry their brain (and also their cellphone and every electronic appliance nearby).
Besides that, the counter has a DOT that keep the minutes and seconds in different positions. If you go a the right of the dot, you are entering seconds and in the left are the minutes. So, if you enter 186, the display will show 1.86, that is one minute, 86 seconds or 2 minutes 26 secs (or something like that, if in doubt, ask your microwave) That’s why you can’t enter 100 seconds because i doesn’t have 3 places for seconds, just 2 and 2 for minutes (88.88).
…thwarted by a wall of text by Zimmy
It’s an easier system with the 140 stuff, much easier that writing seconds all the time =(
Dude, I think that you’re using this microwave issue as a metaphor for some larger problem of life that you’re trying to find an answer to, and you’re coming up with a negative one. Are you a pessimist?
i was just thinking about this
I am SOOOO glad to finally find someone who understands how crazy
the microwave timer is! No one I’ve ever spoken to has seen anything
weird about this way of counting. I suspect my issue might be because I learned too much about counting in different bases, like binary base 2. Zimmy’s comment is frighteningly insightful; left of the decimal counts in base 60; right of the decimal counts in base 100. I would think anyone with a mathematical mind would find that to be a totally nutso way to do things. When I want to re-heat something, I think in terms of how many seconds I want to set it for. Then comes the battle: how do I set the microwave for 230 seconds? Uh… let’s see … 180/60 = 3 minutes; 240/60 = 4 minutes, so I need to set 3 to the left of the decimal and then add another 230-180 = 50… so finally … set the timer to 350 to get 230 seconds. THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I put up a graph I made in open office calc (like excel) showing
the discontinuity at every 100 seconds in how the microwave interprets the numbers put into it. That graph is the link above for “website URL”