There’s a video circulating on the internet that purports to show popcorn being popped by the radio waves emitted from cell phones. It’s been extensively debunked by multiple sources, including Snopes and Wired. Swans on Tea has a quantitative analysis which I highly recommend. Snopes even gives good reasons why it’s probably a viral advertisement.
I have an alternate suggestion. Forget the theoretical reasons why it’s impossible. They won’t convince many people who haven’t gotten their hands dirty in the mathematical details of the theory anyway, and odds are if someone believes this video they haven’t done any of the study necessary to understand the theory. This is not really a fault - probably 99% of people can live life just fine without ever understanding radio waves and microwaves (let alone Maxwell’s equations) in detail.
Besides, what’s this blog called anyway? Built on facts, I think. We get facts by observation.
Finish this post, turn off your computer and get out all the cell phones you’ve got. Put them on a table just like in the video and point them at some popcorn. Pick a phone number (202-762-1401 is the US Naval Observatory master clock, which is interesting in itself), dial it into the phones, and hit send. See what happens.
Now you don’t have to trust me, or another scientist, or an urban legend debunker, or anyone else. You’ll have demonstrated it for yourself. That, my friends, is science.
UPDATE: Here’s my followup post, which has the website of the company which produced the videos.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Jun 11, 2008 at 10:16 am
But I only have N cell phones! What if it takes N+1 cell phones in order to pop the kernel??
2 Carl Brannen // Jun 11, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I looked at the Swans On Tea analysis and concluded his energy calculation is wrong by two orders of magnitude. Basically, he’s got the popcorn 10x too heavy, and he’s assuming that popcorn doesn’t pop until all of its water is turned to steam.
The popping should be due to an excess of pressure. Since water cannot be compressed, popping should occur soon after any of its water begins boiling. Thus the heat of phase change is probably not needed and this is another factor of 10x.
The calculation is just wrong, but I also think that this is a hoax as I don’t see how the antennas could couple even that much energy into a kernel.
3 Carl Brannen // Jun 13, 2008 at 4:30 am
Thinking about this again, I think one should assume that the kernel as a whole is heated up and not just the water. I was told (and believed) that microwave 0vens have a particular frequency because it resonates with water but an authoritative editor at wikipedia assures us that this is not so, and the frequency was chosen so that it would not interfere with communication. In fact, most non metallic substances will absorb microwaves with various skin depths.
So one should look up the heat content of starch too. And maybe compressibility as well.
By the way, re your next post, I have a friend who, from youth, wished to learn the French language. On eagerly taking a college class, the discovery was made that one must first understand English, in the sense of knowing what a pronoun is, etc.
I myself never had the slightest compunction on flunking people. I told them in class that mediocre students perform the important duty of making sure that it is possible for the good students to look good. If they didn’t sign up, we’d have to flunk somebody else out. But I also never felt that flunking calculus meant that you were inadequate. I told them that if they flunked out, it was very likely that either I was not explaining it to them in a way that was working (and it was therefore my fault), or they were too busy to spend the time necessary on practice and study (which differs from student to student).
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