17/05/2012 - SIP Proposal (and Heartfelt Gratitude)

As mentioned in my previous post, a news article wrote on the effects of microwaved water on plants. I wanted to find out, which material best stops these effects, or whether the duration affects the speed of which the plant dies and how the duration affects it. 

So, while I was writing my SIP Proposal, and preparing to send it over, one of my friends talked to my over Facebook chat. He was my P6 classmate who was scarily good at Science, and after PSLE, went to NUS High. I don't deny that I was quite irritated by the interruption, but I genuinely wanted to hear his opinion on my research question too, seeing that he was a really Science-y guy. 

To my complete astonishment, he didn't understand what I was trying to say. In fact, he claimed that microwave ovens do not hold any harm towards human safety and if they did, he would have died because he used the microwave oven every day. When I showed him the article, he countered with another, a website page stating the relationship of microwave ovens and cancer. Not that it was the same, but they were quite similar and some arguments posted on the website clearly stated that microwave ovens merely heated the food up and nothing more. He also did the wiser thing, scrolling down to the bottom of the link I gave him, and then dumping in my face a load of comments slamming the article as false. 

...what can I say? I was shocked, astonished and embarrassed beyond belief. But it also gave me another idea. 

What if my experiment was done to see which article was true? Are the claims on Natural News correct? Or are they wrong? Do microwave ovens really harm people? Do they have some minor negative impact that we can't feel with our bodies? 

When I proposed this question, the friend of mine accepted it and posed several questions to me regarding my experimental procedures. He advised me to use boiled water as in the news article, to have the same type of plants and same type of growing medium, plus also to read up more on microwave ovens since I was basically an idiot in that area. 

Hence, in this post, I would like to thank this friend. He helped me focus on what I was supposed to do and provided me with tips as to go about doing my experiment, and even offered me his ready help should I never need it again. Most of all, he told me not to put metal in the microwave oven. 

To tell you the truth, I was actually planning to put metal in the microwave oven. So, lucky me.