After a long night of doing poorly at poker my friend (thats right I was doing fine =P) brought out a bowl of grapes, tasty, tasty grapes. Somehow we got onto the topic of epic youtube videos, and then making grape plasma in a microwave. So, after a little cajoling, we stopped the poker game to blow some shit up.

Surprisingly it worked as well as the youtube videos. However, it smelled horrid, and only worked with green grapes, not red ones.

Instructions:

1. First cut a grape in half, creating 2 domes. Next take on the the halves and cut down the middle leaving a small piece of skin attaching the pieces.

2. Dry the grape, if it is moist at all this will not work.

3. Place the grape on the center of a plate and into the microwave.

4. Set the timer to 15 seconds, after 3-4 seconds the grape should start sparking.

Have fun!

Working:

How it Works:

The microwave changes the polarity of each side of the grape and energy flows from one end to the other causing sparking. Further, the discharges vaporize the sugars in the grape and then cause them to combust. The combustion products, if they get hot enough due to the continued electrical arcing, form a plasma (gas where the nuclei and electrons have been ripped apart from one another). This plasma is electricially conductive, and so absorbs microwaves keeping itself warm, and causing the cloud to glow. Since the cloud is hot, it rises to the top of the oven. However, the cloud seems to stay remarkably coherent.