@kranfahrer I really wish I had sand to test with. My guess is that it still would have melted it. But sand being an insulator rather than a conductor may have caused some unique differences I could only speculate about. My guess would be that the arc might be able to escape the sand unlike the salt and might not create clear paths through the sand to do it since it isnt behaving as a typical arc, the miwaves are exciting the plasma. Then again it might look exactly the same, I dunno.