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Do Your $20 Bills Explode In the Microwave?
msaulters writes "After repeatedly setting off RFID scanners in a truck stop, the author discovered the culprit was a wad of $20's in his back pocket. In a paranoid attempt to keep the government from tracking him, he attempted to fry the embedded chips in his microwave, with interesting results." Alex Jones has interesting theories about a number of things, but evidently a lot of readers were interested in this one.
And GEEZ. I remember being 12 and having a twenty burn a hole in my pocket, but...
*smacks forehead* Sorry.
Mom says my
I wonder what will happen to these notes when the come into long duration contact with a mobile phone
I always knew Andrew Jackson was giving me the evil eye.
Isn't destroying US currency against the law?
Seems pretty smart to me: 1)Committ a federal offense. 2)Post the proof on the internet.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This person isn't very smart. Why didn't he try it on one $20 bill to start with rather than all of them?
First off, having worked at a Kmart for several years, I have a pretty good idea how the antitheft systems currently in place in most stores and libraries work, and they don't yet use RFID tags; they use some sort of magnetized strip that is then demagnetized by a magnetic pulse or a powerful magnet at the counter (thus the warning not to set credit cards on or near the demagnetizers, lest they be demagnetized too). In fact, RFID tags as the retailers are thinking of using them are partially intended to replace such a system (and partially to replace bar code scanners). Given that RFID tags are barely even starting to be used by distributors, you're not going to convince me that a truck stop of all places is at the head of the technology curve using this expensive equipment that almost no manufacturers even support anyway. Thus, even if an RFID tag was embedded in the money, that shouldn't set off a magnetic antitheft system at all, because the system is looking for something entirely different altogether.
Second, these magnetic antitheft systems are capable of being set off by odd things, such as items of personal electronics or odd bits of metal. (Heck, I even remember seeing one recent news story about a kid who sets off those scanners just by walking through them without anything in his pockets at all, just because his body happens to generate the precise frequency of electromagnetic energy they're keyed to.)
Third, RFID tag or not, those new bills do happen to have a strip of metal foil running through them, right at about the point of Jefferson's left eye...to make counterfeiting harder, you see. And when you subject metallic material to microwave energy, it heats up quickly...that's just basic physics.
So I'm willing to believe that the bills set off ordinary electromagnetic anti-theft detectors just by reflecting the microwaves in some funky way. (Or heck, maybe they even are magnetized in a way that anti-theft detectors can pick up...or at least can become so magnetized, since I doubt that they're all that way...if everybody shopping with new twenties was setting off anti-theft systems, we'd be hearing about that on the news, and the anti-theft system manufacturers would be making hasty adjustments or going out of business.) I'm even willing to believe that those foil strips will cause the money to scorch in the microwave. But it's one heck of a leap to conclude that this is because of Evil RFID Tags That The Nasty Gum'mint Is Sneaking Into Our Money.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
From the article:
So we chose to 'microwave' our cash, over $1000 in twenties in a stack, not spread out on a carasoul.
Now, looking at the second picture, and knowing a bit about how microwaves heat stuff... looks to me like the approximate center of the stack charred up nicely in the microwave. Notice the bills near the top and bottom of the stack are nearly untouched. The reason the center of the bills charred in the same place in all the bill is because it was the center of the stack.
I sincerely hope this article is intended as a joke, or at the very least "we did something really dumb and we're going to at least make it funny" situation.
And for the record, I just zapped a $20 bill for 20 seconds and it's barely even warm, on Jackson's right eye or anywhere else.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Putting together Internet hoaxes! If they were using the latest versions of Photoshop they wouldn't have been able to make all that fake cash to singe.
I'm broke. I just burned up $1K in the microwave, now please COME SLASHDOT MY SERVER AND MAKE MY HOST COMPANY CHARGE ME EXTRA FOR THE MONTH. ;)
Boy, when it rains, it pours.
Explosive devices and would you be allowed to take them onto planes. 'I'm sorry Sir, we're going to have to confiscate your bank notes'...
$20 bills burn in a microwave.
Ergo, $20 bills have embedded RFID tracking chips.
More likely, the metallic anti-counterfeting strips just formed a dipole resonant near the frequency used by the truck stop's anti-theft tag scanners.
Move along, nothing to see here, just some idiot with more money than brains.
The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind you that you love Big Brother.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
I tried it... it didnt work.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
So THIS is why conspiracy theorists never seem to have money.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
While I can't believe this conspiracy theory made to to slashdot, I find myself wanting to experiment too.
Send all of your $20s to: PO Box 7565 Jackson, Wyoming 88096
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
...AKA karma whoring for fun and profit
Mirror w/ pictures
According to NetCraft, Alex Jones' site is hosted at EV1Servers.net... I wonder if the sum total of the ruined money is $700? I guess it would save a lot of time to just burn the money rather than give it to SCO, yet you would still have the same end result: out $700, and nothing much to show for it.
hey, I just put some eggs in the microwave and they exploded - damn chickens have started putting RFID tags in their eggs already!
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Nothing like a Slashdot post to jump to a conclusion.
Clearly, there's something funny going on with the microwaved bills... but stores don't have RFID scanners at the exits yet. They have an acousto-magnetic sensor that gets deactivated by a pad at the cash register so that paying customers aren't supposed to set them off. Big difference here is that the tags in a store system don't yet emit an identifying signal... they all emit the same reply. The store doesn't know what a shoplifter did to trip the alarm, just that they did trip it. There's not quite proof that each bill is emitting its serial number yet.
Also, having microwaved everything in a stack makes things a bit unclear. Did every eye burn on its own, or did just one or two bills in the middle of the stack catch flame which in turn burned all of the bills above and below in varying degrees. Notice that the top and bottom bills were unharmed. Could one bill alone be microwaved safely?
And, BTW, if you so much as put slightly crumpled tin foil in your microwave, you get a similar effect. Could there just be a small metal content in the bill designed so that somebody who has $1000 worth of $20 bills (rather than simply 10 $100's) in their wallet is sure to set off an airport security alarm until they show their wallet to make sure they get an extra security questions?
It's interesting, but I think more research needs to be done. Microwave carefully, people.
Of course, as a previous poster pointed out... There are not RFID tags in money! It's just a bit of wire to help stop counterfiting.
What, are you kidding? And ruin a perfectly good crazy conspiracy theory?
Username taken, please choose another one.
They may have exploded, but they're still valid currency. The treasury has an entire department which is solely for processing damaged money. I remember seeing an interview with one of the inspectors. I believe the essential part of it was that you had to have more than the majority of the bill material in OK condition to prove that you didn't just cut it up and try to claim all the pieces.
Since the bills are intact all the way around and it looks like in many cases the serials are OK, I'd say he's OK, and can get them exchanged for non-exploded ones. Of course, he better not go saying he microwaved them, as destruction of currency is a federal crime(the penny-mangling machines are 'licensed' to do it, to nip one question in the bud...)
What is interesting is that they burned so readily- US currency is supposed to be decently non-flammable(it's one of thousands of tests done on the paper and ink- that's why your bills make it through the laundry OK, for example). It's probably the toughest paper in the world, able to survive virtually anything. Except microwaving, apparently :-)
Please help metamoderate.
$1000 in cash? At a truck stop? Worried about government tracking?
:)
Sounds like smugglers to me.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
metallic ink. same thing will happen if you microwave checks, I expect, around the numbers, which are printed in magnetic MIRC ink.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Now, you should go look at Alex Jones' apparent infiltration of Bohemian Grove, an annual meeting of powerful people -- now that's intriguing.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there have always been serial numbers printed on bills, for the purpose of tracking them. An RFID tag would make it easier to do so electronically, but being able to uniquely identify a particular bill is nothing new - in fact, see Where's George?
Having said that, the possibility that someone could scan the contents of my wallet while my wallet is in my pocket is rather disturbing for a number of reasons. If I were carrying $1,000 in twenties, I wouldn't want to advertise that fact to those around me.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Was she the funny smelling one with all the cats?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm, either my twenties are borked or my microwave... or... these guys are full of shit!! I can't reproduce the effect at all here. There must be something else going on here. Like an attempt to create an urban legend...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Sincerely,
The Mozilla Foundation
1. If I ever shop lift, I'll be sure to get a roll of tinfoil while I at it.
2. If I ever decide to microwave American money, I won't microwave $1000 all at once.
Forget the tinfoil hats, now I need a new wallet.
I have no idea what game this guy is playing, but this tale is complete rubbish.
First of all, if there is an RFID tag in a $20 bill (and I doubt it, given the state of the technology), nobody has RFID tag readers in retail stores. In fact, so far as I know, nobody even has such equipment on the market. Store security systems are a completely different system.
There's no reason to even consider a second point.
This is complete, utter bullshit.
It may cause problems in other ways. I believe that one method that vending machine bill readers use to verify authenticity and denomination of an inserted bill is by reading the magnetic ink signature of the bill. If you wipe that, the bill may be come unusable in bill reader mechanisms.
Other methods include conductivity testing and optical and flourescent recognition.
This link describes some of the methods that modern bill readers may use to authenticate paper money:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/question269.htm
-Crolis
Belvedere: Quiet, quiet, quiet, QUIET! There are ways of *telling* whether she is a witch!
Villagers: Are there? What? Tell us, then! Tell us!
Belvedere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Villagers: BUUUURN!!!!! BUUUUUURRRRNN!!!!! You BURN them!!!! BURN!!
Belvedere: And what do you burn apart from witches?
Villager: More Witches!
Other Villager: Wood.
Belvedere: So. Why do witches burn?
(long silence)
(shuffling of feet by the villagers)
Villager: (tentatively) Because they're made of.....wood?
Belvedere: Goooood!
Other Villagers: oh yeah... oh....
Belvedere: So. How do we tell whether she is made of wood?
One Villager: Build a bridge out of 'er!
Belvedere: Aah. But can you not also make bridges out of stone?
Villagers: oh yeah. oh. umm...
Belvedere: Does wood sink in water?
One Villager: No! No, no, it floats!
Other Villager: Throw her into the pond!
Villagers: yaaaaaa!
(when order is restored)
Belvedere: What also floats in water?
Villager: Bread!
Another Villager: Apples!
Another Villager: Uh...very small rocks!
Another Villager: Cider!
Another Villager: Uh...great gravy!
Another Villager: Cherries!
Another Villager: Mud!
Another Villager: Churches! Churches!
Another Villager: Lead! Lead!
King Arthur: A Duck!
Villagers: (in amazement) ooooooh!
Belvedere: exACTly!
Belvedere: (to a villager) So, *logically*...
Villager: (very slowly, with pauses between each word) If...she...weighs the same as a duck......she's made of wood.
Belvedere: and therefore...
(pause)
Villager: A Witch!
All Villagers: A WITCH!
(they do consequently weigh her across from a duck on Bedevere's largest scale, and she does indeed weigh the same as the duck.)
Witch: (to camera) It's a fair cop.
Looking beyond the fact that they flushed $1000.00, but they were stupid enough to publish their results on the web. So much for the listing on urbanlegends.com. Unfortunately, what they may have failed to realize is that the Federal Reserve Note is not technically theirs. Yes, the value of it is. And in the old days, they could've traded it for an equal amount of gold or silver. But all paper currency in the U.S. is technically the property of the U.S. government. This is why it is illegal to deface paper currency. And these guys were bright enough to do so *and* publish the results. One must wonder if they're going to be fined.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
...apparently has money to burn :)
[sorry, I couldn't help myself... ]
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
(No pun intended.)
I'm taking this article at face value, though I probably shouldn't... (ooh, another pun!)
Is defacing currency legal in the US? Here, if done on purpose it carries a fine.
And I think you'll have a very difficult time convincing someone you burned the right eye of 50 bills by accident.
Here in MI if you have that kind of cash on a state highway the state police can seize it and hold it until you prove it wasn't being used in a drug transaction.
That little strip inside of the bills appears to be aluminized mylar. We all know what happens when you put aluminum foil into a microwave oven.
I made that mistake once, about 20 years ago. My mother gave me a Wendy's Kid's Meal, I didn't eat it right away. Later, I wanted to warm it up so I put into the microwave. I didn't open the box, and I forgot that they wrapped the burgers in a foil type wrapper. It was like fireworks. Bright flashed of blue-white light were coming out of the Kid's Meal box.
I nearly soiled myself out of fear. In those days they led you to believe that if you put metal in a microwave it would be like the Ghostbusters crossing the streams of their proton packs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Moral of the story: don't put a wad of cash into the microwave.
"Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me!" I guess i can't blame them to much though....
Derek Greene
Looking around the website, one can find this choice quote by Alex Jones:
AJ: And that also happened- where you aware the New York Times and Chicago Tribune reported this in '93, the FBI cooked the bomb and trained the driver[s] and had an Egyptian security agent doing it for them, had two retarded Muslims, literally retarded, drive the truck and park it, let the bombing go forward. At Oklahoma City, the same company that destroyed the remnants of the World Trade Center, blew up the remnants of Oklahoma City [and] had that buried under machine gun guard at a private landfill to this day. And they hauled the rubble away from the W T C to China! They wouldn't let you take photographs. Yes, exactly.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I think we're overlooking one very important question here...
Why the hell was someone carrying around $1000, mostly in 20s, in their wallet?
Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get that part...
Actually, $1000 in cash is not all that much for a trucker to carry.
Remember most long distance truckers are on the road for a week at a time. This includes tolls, fuel, food, etc. I did a rough calculation a trip from Ontario to New York and back cost about $500 out of pocket. And lots of truckers transport fruit from California.
He's flirting with you.
Information Unlimited sells Tesla coils. I can speak first hand of how effective they are at frying electronics. I built their BTC3K Tesla Coil when I was in 10th grade, it is fantastic. On days with low humidity purple sparks 10-12 inches in length are not out of the question. I figure that 250,000 volts is more than enough to fry RFID chips.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There are no RFID tags in US currency. There is no METAL in US currency. I just microwaved a new $20 for over two min. in a 2000 watt microwave oven to no effect (aside from being warm). And lastly, the new $20 bills do NOT set off anti-theft systems. The photos are obvious photoshops. Slashdot is slowly becoming the new Weekly World News.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
There's an even easier way to see the twin towers hidden in U.S. currency. Take two $20 bills. Hold one in each hand so the long sides are oriented vertically. Bring your hands together. Notice that the bills look like two identical skyscrapers right next to each other!!! Clearly this proves the US government had prior knowledge. Why, I'll bet it was actually Dick Cheney at the controls of both airplanes. He wanted Halliburton to seize the Iraqi oil fields.
What's the matter? That's a hell of a lot better than the Slashdot story that actually got accepted!
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
would anyone explain to me why conspiracy theory loonies seem hell bent on obsessing over radiowaves, microwaves, etc?
what i'm getting at is, your average pop psychology understanding of paranoid schizophrenia suggests that people are "out to get you", so, controlling your thoughts, tracking your movements, etc. through invisible waves is a wonderful example of this kind of thinking
but what about viruses? why not nanobots?
what i'm getting at is these loonies seem inordinately obsessed over invisible rf waves, but there are a million other "invisible hand" type illuminati control mechanisms they can obsess over
perhaps rf is just easier to understand, reflecting the general low intelligence of paranoid schozophrenics in general i guess
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Dude! You did not pull a proper 720 corkscrew! I order you to smoke a phatty!"
(I think you mean border , not boarder.)
Seriously, why on earth did he include those shots of burned money? Why did he stick the bills in the microwave in the first place? The whole thing is just so damned silly that it hardly even matters what his main point is.
Note the use of the words FRAUDULENTLY and REISSUED, that is to say, the treasury will not be able to replace the bill. Slightly fscking up the currency is not likely to be sufficient to land you in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison unless by some monumental feat of idiocy you were trying to mutilate a $20 into something passing as a $100 as when people try to turn $20 into $60 by cutting off the corners and taping them to $1s. THAT is the kind of "mutilation" the law speaks of. Flattening a penny is not illegal. Melting it into something resembling a quarter, on the other hand, is quite definitely illegal.
US Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 17
Section 331
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or
Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both
Section 333
Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
No, but you'll need 1.34 Canadian $20's to get the explosive power of a single American $20.
Simply put, you just don't get as much bang for your buck.
I see this happen all the time on the TV show "Cops" -- it's as if cash is illegal.
The history and composition of pennies!
Original transcript of article before it was "prettied up" for public consumption.
Me and Bubba was hanging out in this truck stop. We had just escaped a pack of UFO's on highway 66 in our Kenworth while hauling grapes from Florida to Nevada! I saw em! They had lights on them and these strange whirling blade above them!
At this point we had been on crystal-meth for about 46 hours, so obviously our minds were a-clear. So there we were in the truck stop counting all the money we done made transporting meth across state lines for this "mex" called Jose. We had a huge wad of cash! As we left, this young pencil-neck (probably an alien in disguise) started hasseling us about how we hadn't paid for some chewing gum in out pockets or something. That's when I started a wondering how they KNEW?! Must be one of dem R.I.D.E. tags I hear the guberment is using to control our minds! They know our thoughts!
So, Bubba and I bought us some shiney tin foil and wrapped it on our heads. Thank the lord Jesus for the Crystal Meth! We couldn't have come up with this idear ta stop em without it! Well, we started to leave again, and the lil alien started bugging us again about the gum. THEY STILL KNEW! I figured right about then that it must be OUR MONEY! Sure, Bill Gates controls the money, and Jose must have put tracking devices in it fer him!
So we gots real smart and put our money in the microwave! Now it's OK to spend. Sure, it's brown and burnt, but we can still spend it at the titty bar! Thank god for Crystal Meth! Next time, Bubba and I will make sure we bring extra, just in case the guberment tries to bug our coffee.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I remember reading somewhere that a stack of paper put into a microwave will char in the middle. Heat input from all around maximising at the centre. Try it with ordinary paper (carefully) before drawing any paranoid conclusions about RFID tracking.
As my EM prof put it - putting tin-foil into your microwave turns it into a spark plug, and god help you if the sparks strike any explosive elements.
Thank goodness you posted that. I've been storing gasoline in my microwave for years thinking it was safe.
F.Y.I. The worst you could do to a microwave by putting metal inside is break the magnatron, and when it breaks, it will just die, not explode or any cool shit like that. This urban legend was debunked like last season. I can't even find the listing for it anymore.
Feeling with fingernails over Jackson's eyes yields no bump, either.
I get a feeling that IHBT. IWHAND.
The only thing that would be against the law is defacing currency and attempting to use it in commerce.
What if I draw moustaches on the presidents and sell the doctored notes as artistic portraits of Saddam Hussein?
Microwave radiation won't affect RFID. They are too small. Try nuking some ants and see what happens.
Secondly, who is STUPID enough to ruin that much money?
Third, I suspect this is FAKE and if so, someone may be guilty of counterfiting. If they printed up fake bills to make this fake "news" report, the Treasury folks may be interested.
And lastely, Alex Jones is a FLAKE that is in serious need of MEDS..
JMO..
...they're "mid-20s", the previous generation. The new 20s don't have a halo around Jackson.
if the fruit were married in california, could the truck only go to MASS and VT since their fructial union is honored there?
This chip doesn't have collision avoidance, though. So a stack of bills wouldn't be individually readable.
So the technology isn't quite here yet to do it right, but it's getting close. Currently, you can get collision avoidance or tiny size, but not both. Good collision avoidance combined with fast data transfers is hard, and it's wanted by retailers, who want to be able to read out each box in a carton individually. That could be thousands of items. That's do-able, but not with the low-cost tags yet. Retailers want to get tag costs down to around $0.02. Realistically, today RFID tags cost upwards of $0.25.
True public key challenge/response hasn't made it into the smallest tags, either. Challenge/response is available in keyring size and in credit card size, and is used for access control applications. But the low end tags can't do that yet.
Two more years, and this will really be happening. But not yet.
Clearly the government secretly placed an RFID tag in your paper towel sheets in order to track your every spill!!! Placing the towel in the microwave obviously caused the tag to explode, and from now on you should wrap all of you paper towels in tinfoil to prevent the government from spying on you!!!
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I don't think they print $2 bills any more.
Yes, they do. You can even buy uncut sheets of them from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I'm sure they're not as actively circulated nowadays, but they're definitely still printed. See the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing website for more info.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
In recent manifestation of so-called "slashdot effect" power consumption in western united states peaked 200% around 11pm today after bunch of geeks tried to fry their 20 dollars bills in microware ovens in attempt to uncover government conspiracy to track them via hidden micro chips (called RFID tags) in their bills.
on the canadian $5 bill you can turn sir wilfred laurier into spock. just draw some pointy ears and the hairdo and voila! perfect likeness ..sigh.. i guess you guys win this round...
This guy seems to be closest to the target, I think. The reason ants don't fry is that the majority of the microwaves 'miss' them. The ant is smaller than the microwave wavelength (which varies between 10^-1 and 10^-4 meters), and so can miss the crests, so to speak, and avoid frying.
I think it fried all of the bills in the same spot because all of the bills had similar orientation and position, and Jackson's eye was right over a spot of peak intensity. Microwaves don't cook evenly; that's all he's demonstrated.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Did he try passing his wallet through the detector without the money?
I have a Kastanza wallet - I put everything in there, and it's waaay too big. The wallet I had was falling apart, and eventually my girlfriend pretty much forced me into buying a new one. Which I did, at the retail store she works at.
It just so happens that after this, I could no longer get through the metal detector at airport security. The wallet would set off the wand, and the TSA agent would spend a good 3-5 minutes examining the wallet, but couldn't find anything amiss and would eventually let me through.
The *FOURTH* time I went through security an agent finally managed to find the source of my problem: An anti-theft tag placed in some obscure fold of the wallet.
As it turns out, the guy at the store responsible for putting the anti-theft tags in things has a reputation for being able to hide them very well.
So I'd be willing to bet something similar is afoot here.
As for the money burning all in the same spot, it's pretty obvious why: Metal heats up in the microwave, and paper has low thermal conductivity. Put one bill in the microwave, the heat escapes from both sides of the bill fast enough that you don't get enough heat to initiate combustion. Stack 50 of them on top of each other, and now you've got a buncha metal in the middle of a buncha paper, the heat builds up in the center, and now your bills combust. The bills didn't all burn in the same spot - one bill started burning, and then the other bills - all stacked neatly on top of each other - burned in the same spot as the fire spread up and down the stack.
A conpiracy theorist needs to be smart enough to connect a bunch of unrelated facts, but not smart enough to realize that they're unrelated.
paintball
Actually, being very forgetful, I often leave my wallet in my pants when I take them off, and then end up washing it. What do I do if I'm in a hurry and have a wet wallet? I leave the wallet to dry itself, but I microwave the money so I don't pay for things with soggy bills. Am I the only one who does this? I've never had any problem with this exploding stuff, btw...
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
Just so you know, metal does the same thing to microwaves that it does to other electromagnetic radiation: in the absence of a ground, the metal (such as aluminum foil or metal strips in bills) will simply reflect the microwave radation.
The issue is when there is not a sufficient quantity of water (food, glass of water, etc) to absorb the microwaves; they will collide, cause sparks, etc. The metal will resonate and eventually heat up.
Cover your food with aluminum foil and you get sparks. Leave a spoon lying on the plate next to a helping of food and you've got no problem. You just need a sufficient quantity of water inside the chamber to absorb the radiation.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
US paper currency is printed with an intaglio process whereby the (slightly conductive) ink is rolled onto plates and then the paper is pressed into the plates (rather than the plates being pressed into the paper on most presses.) IE the RECESSED parts of the plates hold the ink, not the bits that stick up.
The effective result of using this printing method can be felt on the bill. On a new bill the ink will be coarse and raised off of the paper. The lines will be very crisp and solid. There will be no 'breaks' even microscopic in the ink.
Since it's slightly conductive (it has some metals in it and whatnot) and the lines (and crosshatching etc) are pretty well continuous it's going to be an excellent absorber of microwave energy. Without anything else in the microwave to absorb the energy better than the money, it's likely the ink near the portrait is going to get really hot really fast. This is pretty much what I'd expect from microwaving money.
All that being said, the RFID equipment or the security equipment that this money was falsely triggering must be some of the cheapest crap on the market!
I never carry anything but quarters. This was a bit troubling when I paid the deposit on my house, but it's a small price to pay for keeping the prying eyes of The Man out of my financial transactions.
From the article:
We could have left it at that, but we have also paid attention to the European Union and the 'rfid' tracking devices placed in their money,...
Maybe in X-files country, but here in real life, euros do not have 'rfid tracking devices'. What they do have is a metal strip which makes it more difficult to counterfeit.
Of course I fully expect now to be told that my government only wants me to think that that's just a metal strip... :-)
microwaves don't cook evenly. they're *waves*. they resonate and form standing waves in the chamber of the oven. just like sound. jackson's eye happened to be at a peak of one of these standing waves. since the bills were in a stack, the peak was in the same spot on all the bills.
put any old piece of paper (or more fun, a plate of marshmallows) into a microwave that doesn't have a working turntable. you'll get a pattern of burn marks. you can even measure the distance between them to calculate the wavelength of the microwaves if you want to. basic physics.
this isn't even a *good* conspiracy theory.
If the feds tried to arrest every person who had committed some sort of crime and then posted it to the internet, I have a feeling that Slashdot would be very quiet.
The sparks that fly off metal objects like pop tart bags and CD's are caused by poor insulation in the microwave cavity.
Kinda, but not quite.
Sparks on metal objects is caused by uneven voltage developed on the surface of the object because of an uneven surface, uneven radiation pattern, or both.
Because microwaves are such high frequency and the wattages of most ovens is high (most are around 1 kilowatt), high voltages are easily developed and can leap short distances.
Once the spark leaps once, it ionizes the air along the path making subsequent arcs occur at lower voltage.
Once current flows, as in an arc of this type, the metal will heat up very rapidly and could easily burn paper. I suspect uneven radiation (or even minute flaws) of the metal strips in the bills caused arcing between them, which burned through the paper.
There's normally no insulation in the microwave cavity of the oven because the goal is to reflect the microwaves off ground (the metal surfaces surrounding the cavity) until they can be absorbed by water molecules, causing them to heat up, thus cooking the food.
This is why you are normally advised not to run the microwave oven with nothing in it: the microwaves can bounce around the oven and manage to heat the magnetron instead, causing it to burn out spectacularly.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
The paper describes fancier options, such as only impersonating numbers in some given range so that it only blocks reading some kinds of items, like the serial numbers on 100 Euro banknotes.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The only thing that would be against the law is defacing currency and attempting to use it in commerce. So we learned in Business Law.
Actually, what's illegal is attempting to use it in commerce after defacing it in a way that would let it be passed as currency of higher value.
You're entirely welcome to deface it in a way that doesn't promote fraud. In particular, some defacements are legitimate political speech and protected by the first amendment as interpreted by the courts.
My favorite defacement is to give the portrat of Hamilton on the (old) $10 a Hitler moustache and hair. Hamilton is the founding father who was the ideological head of the Federalists - the group that promoted the changes to the US central government that eventually led it to become the powerful and often oppressive machine it is today.
Not so much deliberately, of course. For instance, his opposition to the Bill of Rights was predicated on the idea that explicitly acklowledging certain rights would create the expectation that the government could stamp out any others. The proponents of the Bill claimed that, absent an explicit list of those that are particluarly important, the government would have no guideline and would stop 'em all. (Of course they were both right.)
But you know what they say about good intensions and paving.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I count only $600 in the pictures. Either he can't count or there is $400 in bills that arn't damaged. What happened to those 20 extra bills?
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
Tell me about it. I broke my Magnatron, and totally fried Optimus Prime too. That's the last time I play Decepticon Rays From Space with my Transformers.
Damn, did I set my watch wrong? Mine says it's March 1st, not April 1st.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faq.htm
Who owns the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
People seem to think there are RFID tags in Euro bills. Let me clearify that they are not there (yet). They try to add them by 2005, according to the eetimes.
I am surprised the government doesn't encourage people to do more destroying of money. When you lose or destroy a dollar bill, the government can print and spend a replacement without causing inflation.
You know, all of those State Quarters that people collect with fervor are almost pure profit for the mint. I mean, it's like the mint has a license to print money!!!!
...but they are openly admitting to committing a felony. It is highly illegal to damage or destroy money intentionally.
Loading...
You are correct that our currency is not backed by precious metals, and is only worth whatever someone will give you for it. However, gold is only worth what someone will give you for it as well, but fiat currency has the advantage that the government can control the total supply of money, and thus limit inflation.
Will someone please mod the parent post back down? Maybe, "-1, Skipped Economics Class?"
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faq.htm#frsq3
Who owns the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
This article at CNN's website was the closest article to the topic introduced here that I could find on CNN, Google News, or Yahoo News. Given the popularity of the RFID issue in the United States technology realm, I would expect it to be in a larger news source such as these. I don't know much about this www.prisonplanet.com place, but I don't have any reason to believe it's highly professional. I get the impressino that it's somewhat of a conspiracy theory website.
/.ers have tried the same microwave experiment, with no ill effect to their bills. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe my fellow /.ers than this story.
The most apparent points of conjecture about this story, in my mind, are:
1. Why, if these tags are in $20's all across the nation, are not people setting off alarms for "no reason" all across the nation?
2. It appears that other
Perhaps these bills were part of a scheme, or an elaborate set of counterfeits with a specific devious purpose in mind. Or perhaps they were never microwaved at all.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
You know if I kept setting off a store alarm and I knew damn well I hadn't boosted anything I'd keep right on walking. "Would you step over here, sir?" would be met with a quick "Fuck you. Call the cops if you think I stole something. Who the hell do you think you are?
Retail employees with hand-scanning wands. Give me a break. If there's a living, breathing witness that saw me steal something, that's one thing. But no machine is going to bear false witness against me. I would refuse to cooperate. A truckstop is not an airport where the guards are employees with authority and jurisdiction to prevent "dangerous" items on board aircraft. I refuse to recognize that they have any authority to search or probe my person.
Those magnetic tag detectors you see in stores have only one valid purpose as far as I can see. To act as a deterrent and scare would-be thieves away. They convey no authority to perform a body scan.
I was, to say the least, intrigued, by this story, so, I wanted to experiment. I grabbed a new $20 and stuck it in the microwave. I started with 1 second intervels and slowly increased and increased. And, in the end... nothing happened. I longest interval I tried was 4 seconds on high, but nothing happened in the end. The total amount of 'on' time for the microwave was about 30 seconds.
I don't know if my bill was defective, or if I didn't put it in long enough, but I seriously doubt this story. The bill never even got toasty, and the right eye was just as warm as all the other parts of the bill. As other people have said, there are tiny amounts of metal in bills normally, so I find it very unlikely that there is any relatively large strip of metal in as well.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
If this actually does happen within two years, then it will certainly make life easier for muggers. Carry a small silent scanner with you and you will know who has the cash.
"Hey you, Show me the money!"
What happens when you stack a bunch of metal strips on top of each other with a fine gap in between? How about rolling them up? ... Congratulations, you just made a capacitor!
Now place in a magnetic field to have it possibly resonate at the frequency that it resonates at.
Or like others suggested, a leftover security strip in the wallet.
People really should learn how to troubleshoot properly. Which reminds me of a story... in short, grad student doing research on fleas, trains his flea to jump when he yells out "Hop!". After much testing and mutilation, one by one, all of the legs get pulled off the flea. He yells out "Hop!", and nothing happens. Hence he begins to write his conclusion:
"When all of the legs are pulled off the flea, the flea becomes deaf".
-- Robi
Ouch....
My...
Eye...
!!!
Australian Money is much more fun. As it is plastic, it melts in the microwave, and as a definate bonus it also releases toxic fumes!
As the US Dept. of Treasury informs us here, they no longer produce $5,000 and $10,000 bills. but they do accept them as legal currency.
Weren't you looking to hire another news editor?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Just imagine the scene at the bank when the intrepid couple goes to replace their cash:
"Umm, I want to replace my 20's because I was dumb enough to burn them in the microwave."
Actually, I'm not sure if banks will take seriously damaged cash. I know that there is a Dept of Treasury office that will replace damaged bills (as long as there is 51% of the bill left), but would a bank take a stack of them since they'd have to turn around and do the replacement? I imagine that the conspiracy couple would just love having to send their money into the government.
Well, this news may or may not be a hoax. However, I have personally had problems with a couple stores and their security devices crop up suddenly in the last few months. I tracked it as far as my wallet. Nothing had changed about my wallet's configuration. It had the same credit cards, id, etc. Suddenly I ran into a problem where I was setting off some security gates when going into or out of a couple of stores in the city where my girlfriend goes to school. So, after some trial and error, I eventually tracked it to my wallet (I tried going through each time I visited her and took one item at a time out of my pockets.. cell phone, loose change, gave her my car keys and had her walk in before me, etc. until eventually I got rid of the wallet and the problem went away--which presents a problem when you want to go to the store to buy something...).
So anyway, there might be something to this although it could be related to the partially conductive ink on newer bills. I haven't bothered to track it any farther (as to specific money arrangements) as I've grown tired of the murderous looks I get from other customers as I walk through and the alarm sounds. (Oddly, the employees never seem to care...)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
The anonymity of pound notes [or dollar bills] is a point in their favour. Imagine if it was possible to trace the history of every note in your wallet?
Suppose some supermarket chain decided not to accept money obtained by gambling; so, say, you couldn't spend money won fairly and squarely at William Hill's in Asda. Or a brewery decided that pubs selling their beer should not accept money that had been used to purchase, shall we say, products that compete with alcohol? If traders could refuse to accept money that had been won in a lawsuit, suing people would become less attractive {maybe there is an upside to this after all}.
There would be a brand new market for "clean" notes, which would go for more than their face value. Meanwhile, some establishments -- and I suspect they would be the posher ones -- would not be so fastidious about checking where money had been.
The end result of knowing the full history of every piece of money would be a situation where money would have different nominal values in different establishments -- and the reason why money was invented in the first place was so that you had something whose nominal value was the same everywhere you went.
I guess it's already possible to do this sort of thing in theory, since every note already has a unique serial number; but the infrastructure just isn't in place to do it. However, you can bet that the infrastructure would find its way into place right as they were in the process of deploying RFID-ed currency.
And just who is going to protect you from all this? In the beginning, only criminals will be affected. That is the way all these new control-freak measures are introduced. But then, the effects will be extended to a group of law-abiding but universally disliked citizens; and then, gradually, throughout the whole of the working class. History has shown that the people will tolerate any abuse of liberties, as long as they can be persuaded that it will only affect those they consider as being somehow inferior to themselves.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
From the article: ... We then walked across the street to a store and purchased aluminum foil. .
"It's a conspiracy! They bugged my money! Quick - get some TINFOIL!" I wouldn't be surpriced if he used the rest of that roll to make a tinfoil hat and put in on his head.
Underholdning.info
Is a fucking nutjob. Anyone in the Austin Area who has TWC and watches his access program for more than 5 minutes can tell you the same.
Maybe its the tracking device the CIA implanted in his skull, or maybe its bad genetics, I don't know. Either way, its sad (yet humorous) to watch the fucker rant.
I've never actually seen him foam at the mouth, but he's gotten close.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
i work at a convenience store/gas station. this provides many opportunities for microwave experimentation. when it rains outside, people tend to pay with soaking wet bills. i regularly dry them by microwaving them for about 10-20 seconds. (we have a higher-wattage industrial microwave.) i have never witnessed any burning like this before, but i usually just microwave smaller bills like 1s and 5s (which, of course, have the older design).
i have, however, seen paper napkins burn and look like this when left in the microwave for a rather long time---say, several minutes. usually this happens when drunk people heat something and forget to turn off the microwave (when not using the timer). since wood pulp napkins would mostly be cellulose, and U.S. paper currency is made from a special blend of cotton (about 90% cellulose) and linen (about 70% cellulose, i think), then i would expect any bill to burn similarly if microwaved long enough.
oh---another fun thing to microwave is halogen bulbs. just about one second and they glow brighter than when they're plugged in.
go look at the picture... some were new, some were older...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
You'd be better off to leave the foil at home and deal with some temporary embarrassment. Wrapping articles in aluminum foil in an attempt to defeat EAS surveillance is using a tool to help you disable an anti-theft device, and is a felony (Burglary).
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
I don't make enough money to just have a $20 laying around at my disposal (no I don't work for slashdot) but I remember a PBS program about these new bills. They were grinding up metal flakes into the green ink. This would produce the "holographic" type shifting colors in the printed ink when the bill is tilted. Perhaps these dudes were nuking the metal shavings out of their $20s? It would make sense that each bill would burn in the same place if they are all printed the same.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I don't know about the security where you are, but where I work those damned alarms never work. There are several other stores in the same complex, and everyone's tags set off the alarms in all the other stores, even if they've been deactivated for the original seller. We don't trust them at all. We watch actual people (you know, with cameras) to see if they're stealing things. And we catch professionals all the time... which could support your argument, I suppose, if they expect our store to act like others do.
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
I'm not terrorably concerned with the goverment tracking the movement of money
You are not TERRORably concerned with the government? Hm...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
Those detectors at Walmart are not anti-theft gates, they're warnings that a customer is leaving the store with money still in his pocket!
I particularly like the emphasis through bolding. It's a subtle and yet clear way of saying, "This is what I mean" in a way that also says, "I speak Swedish and you don't".
It's truly an inspired effort to be very clear and yet say nothing at all to your largely English speaking audience. Kudos.
Never confuse volume with power.
Since at least in the 1970's US bills have used magnetic particles suspended in the black ink to help automate the detection of real bills from phony bills.
This helps vending machines detect the bill as well.
Your comment about aluminum foil in the microwave is exactly right.
The magnetic particles in the bills are going to do the same thing. Especially in a stack of bills. The ink in the eye probably lines up in the stack, and is more concentrated than in other parts of the picture.
The electromagnetic field generated by the microwave will induce a current in the magnetic particles suspended in the ink.
Twinkle twinkle little star, power equals I-squared * R.
The resistance will result in heat, and the bills will burn.
So take off your tin foil hats folks, or at least don't stick your head in the microwave while wearing it!
foil covered wallet.
Steve Wozniak has an interesting story about how he uses sheets of $2 bills on his site. I got a kick out of reading this a few weeks ago:
He ended up raising the suspicions of a casion manager in Las Vegas, who called in the Secret Service because he thought the bills were counterfeit...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
But there is an easier way of knowing there are no rfid tags in 20 dollar bills. Basically it is that if there *were* rfid tags in $20 bills, then we would already know about it. I'm sure $20.00 bills have been completely disected with a microscope/metal-detector/mass-spectrometer-to-det ermine-ink-composition/whathaveyou by entrepreneurial money hackers ( aka counterfeiters ), and if they found anything this nasty, we'd know.
Eat at Joe's.
d00d, that's Gravitron. Not Magnatron. Ours played Led Zeppelin, and you could climb the walls about like spiders climb water. The G's generally pinned you to the wall and sent your stomach into the rafters.
This person isn't very smart. Why didn't he try it on one $20 bill to start with rather than all of them?
:-)
Well, I guess he wanted to try out a Beowulf cluster of them. . .
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
A new breed of muggers has started hitting the
city. They carry rfid scanning wands and casually
scan your wallet without ever touching you. If
you have more than $50 cash, you're the next target!
A mugger can get an RFID scanner, hide in a alley and only step up for business when he gets a strong signal. This eliminates the possibility of mugging people with only petty cash!
Bet you didn't even think of this !
actually, had you set it for a second or two less, and opened the door- it would have gone off in your face.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
RFIDs did not cause his money to burn. Microwaving the money caused the cloth to burn. I'm guessing that the microwave didn't have a carousel in it by the way the microwaves burned through one spot... What a jackass. The author never even mentions if he tried to take the money out of the wallet and walk through the scanner with just the money or just the wallet... There is probably an RFID embedded in the WALLET. I see these things all the time and sometimes they are well hidden, like under a flap. I hope the bank refuses to take back his burned money and then calls the FBI on him for destroying currency.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
If I remember right, US bills have a mylar/foil strip running thru them. You can see it when you hold them up to the light. It also contains a blacklight sensitive dye. If this guy is afraid that strip is being used to track him, he can just throw the gummint off by sending his money to me.
Take it from someone who's learned it the hard way; DO NOT microwave your Visa card!
Open source is the art of letting other people write your bad code.
The store theft detectors are not RFID scanners - they are highly "tuned" metal detectors. If it was the 20's setting it off, then it was probably the "USA $20" strip which has minute traces of metal.
Though I would add that this is a good one for Mythbusters!!!
We don't need no water let the Andrew Jackson burn
burn Andrew Jackson, burn.
FLR
the authors need to put down the crackpipe and the copy of 1984 and get real.
an RFID tag would require a conductor. go see for yourself, scrape layer by layer through the whole area by those eyes and you'll find nothing but paper.
this is NOT to say that there is not an RFID in the new 20-dollar bill, but I certainly assert that there is nothing near the location described by the author.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
There was a scene where the conspiracy theorist guys pulled the strip out of a 20 dollar bill and revealed a transmitter in it.
Why would they bother with paper money that they can't tie to any specific person? That would be pointless to say the least.. It would make much more sense (and is MUCH easier) to use cell phones and credit cards to track people. Try sticking your credit card in the microwave you clod.
Mod +5 Drunk
Our first microwave came with a recipe book for the microwave, one recipe was for bownies that included the tip, put a bit of foil in the corners to keep the brownies from drying out. It was the first time we had ever used a microwave, and you can imagine the shock when lighting began flying around the microwave.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
While your comments may be correct, I wouldn't cite 'Mythbusters' as a source of factual information.
The episode with the microwave employed almost zero science, as do most of their experiments. I was surprised that they did not build a microwave out of ballistic gelatin and then say that it had almost exactly the same properties as a real microwave.
Get a stack of small sheets of paper (helps if they're slightly absorbant, blotting paper is ideal) and place a small drop of water on one, ensure that is it soaked up by the paper. Put the piece witht he wet spot somewhere near the middle of the stack and leave for a while (let the water soak into the adjacent sheets). With the paper still in the stack put it in a microwave oven and heat on full power for 30 seconds. Depending on the amount of water you put on the initial sheet you might see the paper catch fire in the oven and explode or when you get the stack out you might see a scorch mark on the sheet you put the water on and the sheets either side of it. Very much like the photographs of the $20 bills in the article.
Metal reflects microwaves, water is heated by microwaves. Seeing a burned spot demonstrates the presence of water, not an RFID chip. Microwaves destroy RFID chips much like static electricity destroys CMOS chips, the electric field generated (several thousand volts but tiny amounts of current over very short amouints of time) destroys the P-N junctions. The heating effect is negligable.
I've seen similar effects wiping magnetic tapes in a domestic microwave.
I can only assume that the affected spot on the writer's $20 bills had gotten damp (maybe there's something about the way the bills are made that makes that spot more absorbant).
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I had the same problem, I walked into a store once alarms went off. It turned out my new wallet had a security tag tucked under the lining that was never deactivated.
Here in CT there's a famous grocery store whose founder was charged with skimming $17M from the corporate accounts in order to avoid $6M in taxes. He decided one way to get out with some of the money would be to head for the Carribbean with $80,000 in lots of pads of $20s hidden under baggy clothes. What he failed to take into acount were the metallic printed threads on the newer 20s - the aggregate of which managed to set off the metal detector. What they really got him for was not telling anyone he was leaving the country with more than $10,000. Then it got really bad.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
That a stack of $20 bills burns in a microwave is not proof of an RFID conspiracy. If you take a stack of ordinary paper and put it in the microwave long enough, it burns from the middle. This is an old hacker prank. Back in the days of punch cards, if you put a stack of punch cards in a microwave, they burned from the middle. The top and bottom cards were fine, but the middle ones were charred. (It was a mean prank to play on the card feeder.) Notice the photograph of the bills. Some are charred a little, some are charred a lot. I would lay freshly baked $20 on the fact that the amound of charring is dependant on the depth in the stack.
I have one follow-up question for Dave and Denise: do the charred bills set off the scanner? This would not be proof, but it may provide contrary evidence to their claim.
Photoshop doesn't work with the new $20 bills. :)
Wait a minute. This guy is trying to determine whether cash has RADIO FREQUENCY ID's embedded in it... by exposing them to MICROWAVE FREQUENCY radiation?
Something tells me he slept through his Physics for Crackpots lectures.
An interesting thought occurred to me- what if the bills don't just *contain* a tag, but *are* the tag. The engraving was redesigned- how difficult would it be to arrange it so that the printing on the bill becomes a viable circuit (antenna, capacitors, whatever else is needed)?
Not that I mean to fan the flames (puns not intended) of conspiracy theory...it is my opinion that "The Government" already has too much information flowing in and not enough ability for analysis. As mentioned elsewhere, every bill has had a unique identifier (serial number) for quite some time. The printed versions can't be read remotely, but could be tracked whenever the bills changed hands. Whether this data could be rationalized into information is another question.
A friend of mine had a similar run-in with an airport metal detector and his stack of traveler's checks- each had a foil seal on the face, and collectively these created enough of a signal to set it off. Maybe a simple precaution would be to ensure the bills are oriented randomly (i.e. some with A.J. facing right, others turned 180 degrees and facing left, still others face down in the stack...)
All true paranoids and patriots unite- pay for everything using old quarters...or better yet- pennies!
Will the microwave oven work on the chips in my head too?
1. Cut a grape in half and put the two halfs next to each other on a paper plate.
2. Set microwave to 30.
3. Profit!!!!!
Grapes have embedded chips!
STOP.
Correct. Microwaves are nonionizing.
Correct. The only damage you will take is in the form of localized heating of your body parts.
Incorrect. There is a risk. There are no nerve endings in many places that are highly susceptible to heat damage - places like your brain, the vitreous humor in your eyeballs, and internal organs. If there's a warped/open door, or if you've gone one step further and defeated the safety interlock to power up a magnetron externally, you could be (relatively) safe in location X,Y,Z, but six inches next to X,Y,Z, the big reflecting metal plate of your fridge, your stovetop, and the hole in the homebrew shielding you created have created a local "hot spot" node where localized heating is much more rapid.
Play with a magnetron if you like, but be aware that by the time you feel warmth, it may already be too late.
(As long as the door is intact, as long as the safety interlocks are intact, and as long as you're not afraid of damaging the oven and/or are prepared with a Class C extinguisher to deal with a small fire that manages to escape the confines of the oven, there's relatively low risk. I'd consider the "fry a $20 bill" and "spark a CD" experiments safe, but your mileage may vary.)
"Negative, I am a meat popsicle"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I believe there is an issue with certain types of wallets. Eelskin wallets can erase your credit cards. Perhaps this has something to do with it? Don't the RFID scanners scan for magnetism? Wait, this debunks that theory.
Lousy facepalm.
A stack of 50 $20 bills is thin enough that they are headted essentially uniformly by microwaves. It may be that there's differential absorption in the inks, but the important thing is that a stack
of paper is a damn good insulator.
So apply heat uniformly to a block, but only let it escape (slowly) from the sides. The middle of the block is going to get really hot.
Do you notice how his disassembled bills have some less-injured ones on top? They had better cooling.
There's no magic RFID receiver with explosive anti-tampering protection; it's just that if you pump 1000 watts of power into a small space and don't let it escape, you're going to get some really dramatic heating! Lots of energy in a small space is basically the definition of an explosion.
The guy left the bills in the microwave too long. You put less than an ounce of anything in the microwave for a minute at full power and see if it doesn't get awfully damn hot...
What happens is the lack of anything to absorb the microwaves causes all the energy to be re-absorbed back into the magnetron, heating it up. Fortunately, the designers of microwave ovens put heat fuses on the magnetrons so they stop working (hopefully) before the tube itself dies. You can heat lots of unusual items relatively safely by putting a mug of cold water in the oven to absorb the excess energy.
Once upon a time I was employed to actually do microwave oven research, and the duties involved microwaving all kinds of odd things to see what would happen. (Wood pencils are my favorite since they exhibit burn marks at a nice half-wavelength intervals, or about 6cm. Put one in your oven with a small mug of water with the turntable off and see). The research was done in a jury-rigged "oven" that had no safety interlocks or heat fuses.
When a magnetron is overheated to excess it doesn't explode. The ceramic permanent magnets can crack badly, but I've never seen one explode. It simply doesn't heat up fast enough.
Most things are unexciting when microwaved. In general, metals just get hot. Tinfoil and neon bulbs were both fun. (foil sparks, bulbs flash.) The only thing I tested that actually exploded was chicken wire wrapped in aluminum foil, and even then it's not a movie-style explosion but simply a nice capactitive buildup until finally the resulting arc rips the foil apart rather dramatically.
It does make a really nice bang when it goes.
A far more dramatic explosion could be had by simply heating a thick 1L bottle half-full of water until the steam pressure built up enough for an explosion.
Yeah, they PAID me to do that. Not a lot, mind you, but it's definately good for storytelling after the fact.
Best part: burning things for money
Worst part: accidently burning myself (for money)
You've never felt a burn until you've been RF-burned. It hurts all the way through.
Accidently brushing the 4500 volt RF-modulated power supply was also pretty unpleasant.
But again, both are great for stories.
INCORRECT -- heating is far from the worst.
/ 2/449, or google "microwave coagulation")
Microwaves are used medically for simultaneous cautery and coagulation during surgery.
(See http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/abstract/171
Medical microwave scalpels have 50-100W of output power, and are directed at specific tissues. Your 1200W GE Profile version is a bit "hotter" and a lot more random.
And random coagulation is bad (google thrombosis).
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Perhaps the metal strip contained in all twenties is the reason the money blew up?
Holding the twenty up to a light with Jackson facing me, I can clearly see the strip just to the left of the zero on the left side. I checked an older "new" twenty and it's there and a new, new twenty and it's also there.
I'm not quite sure why this would cause Jackson's right eye to blow up, but it makes more sense than the RFID transmittor in every twenty.
I tried microwaving my 20's and nothing happened. My guess is that there was something in the middle of the pack which induced enough heat from the microwave to ignite the papers.
His attribution of this to RFID tracking makes it a tin-foil hat theory. An interesting one, but false.
Of course they're in his eyes. The government is using them to track or 'watch' us! ;)
It's a camera device!
There you are, staring at me again.
Anyone else take this seriously. I thought maybe it was really possible, so I did some quick googling. According to the folks at RFID journal and Wired magazine, this (RFID tags in money) is on the table for discussion but not in production yet. Anyone else have a different opinion? www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/523/1/2/ http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59565,00. html
I am stunned. I guess no one has ever challenged that in the courts. I would like to believe that if you were to challenge that you would win else it is no longer a matter of innocent until proven guilty. It has come to the point where everyone is guilty. Where the police have the power to say you are guilty and disrupt your life for nothing more than carrying cash.
That is not the function of the police. That is the function of the courts after a case has been built against a person, and sufficient evdence of a crime has been shown. The police exist to keep the peace, not to disrupt it because they have become paranoid. Certainly crimes exist, but to say, "You have a lot of cash and therefore are a suspect of committing a crime. Prove to us you weren't and we will give you your money back." is, to me, absolute insanity.
The government is supposed to exist to serve the people. Any government that has set itself and its laws up in such a way that there are so many criminals that they have to assume everyone is guilty has done themselves and their citizens a huge disservice in my opinion.