[thedoc]

Sydney Shangombe asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hi Chris
 
Shooting straight to the point.  Has the opposite of a microwave been invented?  As in, you take a warm beverage like a beer - put it in a microwave like machine..  And voila! after ten seconds or so, it's ice cold. If not, is this kind of invention possible?
 
Regards,
 
Sydney Shangombe

What do you think?

[Mazurka]

No.  Microwave Ovens use a principle called dielectric heating - which is where the bonds in polar molecules (such as water) are excited by bombarding them with high frequency electromagnetic radiation (microwaves).  The extra energy in the molecules manifests itself as heat. 
Unfortunately the reverse is not true - we cannot make the molecular bonds radiate heat away from the liquid.

[CliffordK]

There is a Laser Cooling or Doppler Cooling which uses light to cool specific atoms or molecules.

[BishopE5]

They can, but they aren't marketable.

[BioChemSFC]

Not really. The increased rotational vibration of H2O by microwave radiation causes heat. Maybe if you had a sample that was being exposed to microwaves you could reduce the amount of heating with another source that caused cancellation. But that is reduction of heating and not cooling. Thermodynamics was useful for something I guess :P. The microwave is only adding to rotation of H2O and since the water molecules don't have a direction specific rotational vibration it would be impossible to reduce movement by causing more vibration.

[janesi87]

it's really sound strange for me with "a cooling microwave". I think that it will be similar with the refrigerator. So who will buy it???