Okay. Does the oven's magnetron generate the same frequency as the speed of light? Also, how am I to be certain what I am measuring is really a wave without taking someone else's word for it?
"Okay. Does the oven's magnetron generate the same frequency as the speed of light?"
Do you think that English should be the official language of the United States?
Speed and frequency are two different things. The frequency is the number of wave crests per second. If you're at the beach and the waves lap up on to shore one every second, that is a frequency of one Hertz. Say each wave at the beach are a yard apart between crests, that's the wave length. The speed of a wave is defined as the wave lenght times the frequency.
Have you ever taken a long phone cord and shook it so it vibraves like a guitar string? Notice if you shake it a little faster, you'll end up with a spot half-way down the cord that looks like it isn't moving. This is a harmonic node. There are also nodes at your hand, and at the phone where the cord is plugged into. The distance away from this center area the cord travels is the amplitude of the wave. These areas of the highest energy are the antinodes. Notice that there are two of them, one on each side of the stationary spot in the middle. In this case the frequency is the number of complete shakes in one second, and the wavelength is the distance from your hand to the phone.
What you are measuring with the chocolate bar or thermal fax paper are the antinodes. These are places where the energy is highest. There are two of them per every full wavelenght. Light and sound can be thought of just like a wave at the beach or a rope, but instead of up and down motion, they have areas of high and low pressure or energy. In areas of high energy, food cooks. In areas of low energy you get cold spots.
So, when the chocolate bar is put into the microwave without the turntable, some areas get hot much faster than others. The hot spots are where the antinodes are. Measuring the distance between the hot spots gives you the distance between two antinodes. This is half a wavelength.
Microwave ovens all work on a frequency of about 2.5 Giga Hertz. This is because this frequency of light excites water molecules. Excitement translates into heat. There may be slight variation in the exact frequency of any particular oven, but all ovens work around 2.5 Giga Hertz. The speed of a wave is defined as the frequency multiplied by its wavelength. Since the distance between two antinodes gives you half a wavelength, multiply this times two. This will give you the speed of light. Hot spots in microwaves are all about 5 to 6 centimeters (2 1/2 to 3 inches) apart.
This is why microwaves have turntables in them, in order to spread the energy around. Without the turntable, food will have hot and cold spots and won't cook evenly.
Now that you know the speed of light, you can do more things like use trigonometry to figure out how far Supernova 1987A is. Light travelling at 3 x 10^8 meters per second from that exploding star took almost 170,000 years to get here. Supernova 1987A is the most distant object measured through direct triangulation, and it is almost 10^18 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away.
Without the concept of wavelength, frequency and speed of travel have nothing to do with each other.
Wavelength x Frequency = Speed
The frequency of visible light is several orders of magnitude greater than your microwave oven.
The wavelength of your oven is measured in centimeters 12cm (2.45 Ghz).
Visible light is measured in nanometers. Red is around 700nm (428,000 Ghz), a nominal green is about 525nm (570,000 Ghz).
Well, Kenneth, speed is not a frequency. You should learn basic terminology. [VI=ON]