- The Cat

P.S. The way cell phones do their thing, the direction you point them won’t matter.

P.P.S. If it were that strong the camera would have gone on wonkie.

Even if you could somehow set up a perfectly synchronized and stable standing wave, the power simply isn’t there…and it would be at the wrong frequency for cooking popcorn even if it were there.

I call “BS”!!

My boys and I tried it last night with 4 phones and it didn’t work.

Myth Busted!

Verdict: As plausible as Elvis crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster.

vonspringer on June 9, 2008 at 8:34 PM

Alright, now you’re just sending mixed signals.

Guys, the links Allah provided are fairly conclusive.

Also note that cell phone antennas, in my experience, tend to be mounted along the long side of the cell phone. That would have the ends of the antennas aimed at the popcorn kernel. As it happens the ends of monopole antennas are radiation nulls. That means VERY little energy from the phones is reaching the kernel.

{^_^}

Wrong.

1. Microwave ovens actually are a cavity resonator operating at hundreds of times the power of this entire setup and it still takes minutes to pop the kernels. EM waves cannot resonate in free space as in this cell setup, only in a conducting cavity.

2. In free space, at most the peaks will add, multiplying the (tiny) power of one phone by 4, but that’s only if the frequencies are exactly the same and in phase. Neither is true – phones explicitly detect and avoid the frequencies of nearby phones to prevent interference.

3. Water molecules do not resonate at cellular or microwave frequencies. If they did, microwaves would be strongly absorbed by the surface layers of moisture and would not penetrate at all into the interior of food. The lowest resonant frequency of water is in the 22GHz range, more than 10 times the standard cellular phone frequency bands.

Verdict: As plausible as Elvis crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster.

vonspringer on June 9, 2008 at 8:34 PM

..why I said, “But then again” above.

As for popcorn popping, it pops because the moisture in the corn is heated to boiling, then explodes popping the corn.

All cellphones operate at microwave sized wavelength (10^-2 m). So its just a matter of using the superposition principle. Superposition is where peaks and troughs of waves add together to get a different wave sizes. Peaks and troughs added together yield bigger ones, while a peak and trough gets you smaller or no waves (called a node).

If the microwaves add up at the right spots, they will grow so large that they will affect other things around them. In this case, the the water molecule in the corn kernel resonates at the same frequencies the cell phones emit. They must, since the videos provide ample evidence. This would be a fun experiment to play in school. I will bring this up with one of my professors to validate it.

Weebork on June 9, 2008 at 6:49 PM

…just what I was thinkin…

But then again…

(Just remember to put them on vibrate! The phones, not your friends.)

Most likely: clever editing.

Damn, ya beat me to it! :-)

He countered, “Well, perhaps they only studied one, two, or three at a time, and simply never pointed four of them at each other, in just that particular configuration.”

I said, “I take that back, this is not a hoax video. This is a piece of art.”

-

I had a wrist watch when I was eight. I lost it before I was nine. It was the last piece of complex technology I ever carried about with me.

If the microwaves add up at the right spots, they will grow so large that they will affect other things around them. In this case, the the water molecule in the corn kernel resonates at the same frequencies the cell phones emit. They must, since the videos provide ample evidence. This would be a fun experiment to play in school. I will bring this up with one of my professors to validate it.

Sorry to add, but the water molecules in your body will react the same way as the corn kernels. Thankfully, our skin and amount of water/tissue/mass will keep us from becoming popcorn.

My verdict: Quite Possible.

Weebork on June 9, 2008 at 6:49 PM

Wrong.

1. Microwave ovens actually are a cavity resonator operating at hundreds of times the power of this entire setup and it still takes minutes to pop the kernels. EM waves cannot resonate in free space as in this cell setup, only in a conducting cavity.

2. In free space, at most the peaks will add, multiplying the (tiny) power of one phone by 4, but that’s only if the frequencies are exactly the same and in phase. Neither is true – phones explicitly detect and avoid the frequencies of nearby phones to prevent interference.

3. Water molecules do not resonate at cellular or microwave frequencies. If they did, microwaves would be strongly absorbed by the surface layers of moisture and would not penetrate at all into the interior of food. The lowest resonant frequency of water is in the 22GHz range, more than 10 times the standard cellular phone frequency bands.

Verdict: As plausible as Elvis crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster.

My wife is heating up the hottub with her cellphone as I type this.

This is what I noticed:

1) The popcorn doesn’t fall at tempo as they burst. The 2nd seems late.

2) All the popcorn falls away from the camera man, pretty much clustered by the OJ pitcher. They should have gone in random directions. As it is, to me it looks like someone is dropping them from above the cameraman’s head.

3) If you look closely at the last pair of kernels, the back one pops. But if try too look at it popping frame by frame, when the back kernel bursts, the popcorn is in front of the unpopped kernel just as it shoots up.

couldn’t it be as simple as someone using a blow drier and editing the sound out?