Right, but for that to happen you'd have to stick your... uh... various balls directly into the path of the RF field. Like at the business end of a big RF horn antenna.

We're getting beyond my depth here, but a few things occur to me. First, I know microwaves `work'; the optimal frequency at which water exhibits the skin effect is about 10GHz, so at 2.45GHz the energy from a microwave oven penetrates meat effectively instead of only frying the surface, as one would expect if the skin effect dominated. Also, I suspect the skin effect could actually cause internal burns; an internal organ that exhibits a strong skin effect at some frequency will cause localized heating on its surface, burning tissue internally.

Yep, I have a RF burns on 2 of my finger tips that I sustained between 5 and 10 years ago... They are dead little bits of flesh. Discolored a deep yellow, there is no feeling left and they feel, I guess I'd describe it as, quasi-numb when touched.

I was an embedded engineer at an RF company and it sort of comes with the territory. We had technicians who had lasted 4+ decades in RF (same company, actually) with scars to show for it. Same story, mostly on their fingers from accidentally hitting hot spots.

That reminds me of an urban legend regarding microwaves, which doesn't seem entirely infeasible. It involves a man working at a small fast food stand, who worked next to his microwave. Now his microwave was used often, and it had a small hole in the metal screen allowing microwave radiation to leak out. The man slowly starts to feel abdominal pains after a while, goes to his doctor, who diagnoses it as liver problems and recommends drinking less. A couple of months later, the man has died, and the autopsy reveals that parts of his liver were cooked.

I was told this story by my grandmother to prevent me from watching food cook in the microwave. That and cataracts, which can also be caused by heating up things that shouldn't be heated.