system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Some vegetables will cause sparks in a microwave. I have read that this will damage the magnetron, but I cannot find a description of the mechanism that would cause such damage. Is it true?
gpt
As long as there's something in the microwave that can be heated no damage will be caused. You can even melt silver in a normal microwave you just have to put your melting pot in sand so the heated silver doesn't destroy bottom of the microwave.

Running a microwave empty (and assuming the oven does not have a high temperature shut off) will damage the magnetron. Simply because the energy that is supposed to heat the food will no heat up the circuit. But usually it's some other part of the circuit that would get damaged since the magnetron is already operating at high temperatures and has heat sinks and very often a fan as well.