I did, in the end, do the eggmobile experiment – with a group of urban café teenagers. By the time we'd thought it through, it cost even more in call time than my first sight expectation; but in the scale of things it was still a cheap enough piece of research. And it enables me to hold up my head when urging others to check facts rather than believe everything they are told.
Cellphones vary in the amount of radiation they produce at the earpiece; generally speaking, it reduces with time as design improves in newer 'phones. A thorough study would look at many different combinations, but we contented ourselves with two: a pair of the latest 3G handsets, and a pair of older (1996) ones. We also set up a control: an egg sandwiched between two inactive phones which were switched off. Given the information available on Snopes, nobody expected the egg to hard boil although the possibility had to be allowed for. More plausible was a discovery that the temperature within the egg would rise detectably. Through holes drilled into each egg, we inserted temperature sensors (one in the dead centre of the egg, one against the inside of the shell at the closest point to each 'phone). The probes were attached to a data logger, and the reliable resolution of the system was 0·1°C.
To cut a long story short ... the temperatures in the egg flanked by new phones did not change at all in the hour, even at the shell closest to the 'phone. Nor did that in the control. In the egg between the older 'phones it rose by 0·3 degrees at the shell, but not by any measurable extent at the centre.
Running the older 'phone set up again with the handsets switched on but SIM cards removed, transmitters and aerials destroyed with a hot soldering iron, and the 'phone bodies wrapped in metal foil, produced exactly the same temperature results. With a 3mm layer of thin polystyrene foam added between 'phone and egg, the temperature rise disappeared entirely. It would seem that the heating cause is simply the warming up of the handset by power flow from the battery, not radiation resulting from communication. Attaching sensors to the 'phones themselves supported this: the old handsets warm up significantly in use, the new ones very little.
6 comments:
Scientists on the Death Star had tried for decades to trick an earthling into building the necessary device to transmit the DNA of life from Earth to their planet. Then, one lucky day, they found Felix ...
Superb! Easily publishable in Nature. Mr. Wizard. Indeed, cell phones can work in the low GHz range (800-MHz (IS-54) or 1900-MHz (IS-136)) which is not that much lower than your typical microwave oven at 2.45 GHz. The power must be much lower and, of course, microwaves are not ionizing. Just wait for the advent of gamma ray cell phones!
JH> ...they found Felix...
...who, under instruction from the wise Queen of the Virginia Mountains, set them not human DNA but ... foetal chicken boogers.
Their DNA replicator exploded in a most satisfactory way, taking the Death Star and the galaxy's most famous asthmatic with it.
Dr C: Thank you – I shall pack up and send my manuscript right away! :-)
"... foetal chicken boogers."
Uh oh. I think some of it got away. This may explain Mr. Fudge's discoveries.
Julie: I can't get past my delight at this goo being investigated by a Mr Fudge ... :-)
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