For the Love of God, Please Don’t Put an Aluminum Ball in the Microwave
![For the Love of God, Please Don’t Put an Aluminum Ball in the Microwave](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/425.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85&blur=80)
![For the Love of God, Please Don’t Put an Aluminum Ball in the Microwave](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/425.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
![Ryan General](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ns.jpg?width=128&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
By Ryan General
An April Fools’ Day prank had people destroying their microwave ovens in an asinine attempt to turn some crumpled aluminum foil into a shiny ball.
![](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2-11.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
On April 1, there were some viral tweets which claimed a process to magically transform the foil by heating it in the microwave for a few minutes.
![](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1-13.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
Images used in the tweets reportedly originated from a story involving Japanese Twitter user @Asu_Astell who, back in March, made a shiny ball by pounding a foil ball with a hammer and then finishing it with sandpaper.
As most people are lovers of all things shiny, the tweet immediately went viral, earning almost 100,000 retweets in a matter of days.
Here’s how he actually did it, according to BuzzFeed:
- Create a rough sphere with aluminium foil.
- Use a rubber hammer to shape it into a more exact sphere.
- Hammer the ball for about two hours. Once the ball’s hard enough, use a hammer to shape again.
- Polish the ball with coarse sandpaper, and then with fine sandpaper.
- Put liquid abrasive on a dry cloth to gently polish the ball.
The process obviously did not involve a microwave, but a prank soon emerged from it and took a life of its own. Some conniving Twitter users took advantage of the more gullible netizens, tricking them into throwing foil in the microwave.
![](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/3-8.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
Soon enough, a few people began tweeting photos of broken microwaves, purportedly due to the prank.
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Fortunately, many netizens proved that there are still indeed some good in the world by warning others about the harm of attempting to make shiny balls of aluminum foil.
![](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/12.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
![](https://nextshark.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/11.jpg?width=1536&auto_optimize=medium&quality=85)
Featured Image via Twitter / Badoodled
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