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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 always knew Andrew Jackson was giving me the evil eye.
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.
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.
$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.
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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!
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.
What, are you kidding? And ruin a perfectly good crazy conspiracy theory?
Username taken, please choose another one.
No, that's a myth.
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.
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?
Why should it be illegal?
A $20 bank note is your receipt for lending $20 to the government with no interest.
If you'd like to lend $20 to the government and then not claim it back later, I'm sure that the government will be very happy.
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;
In fact, there's an address in Washington D.C. to which you could send the remains of destroied bills and they'll do their best to piece things together and redeem the value of the pile... yep, it really exists.
Once you aquire the money by legal means, it becomes yours so you can do to it as you please.
I once worked at a cutlery corporation where they demonstrated scissors by cutting up coins. and they told us its legal, so if the company gets fried for that, not my fault.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Forget the tinfoil hats, now I need a new wallet.
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.
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.
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.
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
Coming soon to thinkgeek.com: Tin foil pants!
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)?
How was he supposed to know the money would start burning?
Maybe because he put it in an oven..?
Dialectician. Archology.
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.
The history and composition of pennies!
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.
In this case, it's a $20 fine per bill destroyed. Unlike most crimes, there's no need for police, judges, etc. to enforce this.
Rank Presidents by th
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?
Not a problem. Just make a photocopy first.
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..
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
Yea, Yea
...
:P
and in Soviet Russia
We got already
We don't need no stinking sig!
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
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
I always thought that as long as you had more than half of the bill, you can just take it to a bank and have it replaced...
Wow!
1) Take 4 * 1$
2) Break it into: 4 * ( 3 * 1/3$ )
3) Group it into: ( 2 * 3 ) * 2/3$
4) Now you have 6 * 2/3$
5) Give it to bank
6) Get 6$ from bank
Profit = 6$ - 4$ = 2$
And now repeat.
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
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.
It is against the law. Men with earpieces and black suits could come knocking.
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. This comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service.
Here's the relevant bit of the US Code:
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.
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!!!!
It is illegal in the United States too.
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!"
Sorry, but you are mistaken, there are RFID Readers available for ANYONE to buy. Wallmart has used RFID tags and readers to track Gillete razors (look it up yourself).
What makes me wonder is how 'complete bullshit' gets modded up...
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
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 $10,000 bills. but they do accept them as legal currency.
Weren't you looking to hire another news editor?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Well, this news may or may not be a hoax. However, I have personally had problems with a couple stores and their security devices crop up suddenly in the last few months. I tracked it as far as my wallet. Nothing had changed about my wallet's configuration. It had the same credit cards, id, etc. Suddenly I ran into a problem where I was setting off some security gates when going into or out of a couple of stores in the city where my girlfriend goes to school. So, after some trial and error, I eventually tracked it to my wallet (I tried going through each time I visited her and took one item at a time out of my pockets.. cell phone, loose change, gave her my car keys and had her walk in before me, etc. until eventually I got rid of the wallet and the problem went away--which presents a problem when you want to go to the store to buy something...).
So anyway, there might be something to this although it could be related to the partially conductive ink on newer bills. I haven't bothered to track it any farther (as to specific money arrangements) as I've grown tired of the murderous looks I get from other customers as I walk through and the alarm sounds. (Oddly, the employees never seem to care...)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
>> Group it into: ( 2 * 3 ) * 2/3$
Dang, they've thought of EVERYTHING.
US Code, Title 18 Sec. 484. Connecting parts of different notes
Whoever so places or connects together different parts of two or more notes, bills, or other genuine instruments issued under the authority of the United States, or by any foreign government, or corporation, as to produce one instrument, with intent to defraud, shall be guilty of forgery in the same manner as if the parts so put together were falsely made or forged, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
- (a) The oven manufacturer, for not stating that it may damage currency in the manual; or
or all of them, and won some.(b) The government, for not printing do not microwave in the currency; or
(c) The bank who gave them currency without a proper usage manual.
Which, ironically, is the same thing that happened in Japan a few years ago. The law, at the time, was that 90% of the bill had to exist to have it replaced. Some clever criminal types decided to cut 10% off of 9 10,000 yen ($100 dollar) bills, and reassemble it to be 10 90% complete bills. These were then redeemed (mostly at gambling institutions) for proper bills, and the cycle was continued. Needless to say, the law has since been changed.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
That is incorrect. From Bureau of Engraving
"Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, 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, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service."
Destroying it completely may be ok, since you have no evidence it happened.
--ngoy
Considering every bill already has a serial number, I fail to see the problem.
You need to be within about 4" to communicate with most RFID tech anyway. And US Govt certainly does not have extra money to add this technology.
Likely the burn is from the different concentrations of ink in the face of the bill.
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.)
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.