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HOWTO, Cook an Egg With Your Cell Phone
xPosiMattx writes "Suzzanna Decantworthy published an article in her Wymsey Weekend column that described how to cook an egg with two cell phones. From the article: "Many students, and other young people, have little in the way of cooking skills but can usually get their hands on a couple of mobile phones. So, this week, we show you how to use two mobile phones to cook an egg which will make a change from phoning out for a pizza.""
Bzzt. Brainiac (an alternative to Mythbusters) tried this with 100 phones, and the phones were literally covering the egg, and they left the egg under there for a while. It definitely didn't cook, and they reported it didn't even get remotely warm either.
Problem #1. Handheld cellphones do not emit 2W. The old analog handhelds were capped at 700mW and I suspect the digitals emit much less based on the power available to them and the talktime.
Problem #2. Even if you scrounged up some old bagphones with their 3W output power, they still only gives you six watts of power. I don't think that is going to cook an egg in the time claimed.
Democrat delenda est
For so many reasons:
1) Cell phones are the wrong frequency. They are 800, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz depending on the service. To make water heat up, you need to be at the frequency water resonates which is 2.4GHz.
2) Cell phones are too low power. A microwave that will cook an egg in a couple of minutes is going to have power expressed in at least the hundreds of watts, and probably will be 1000 watt. Cellphones have output power expressed in the miliwatts, that 1/1000th of a watt. We are literally talking over 5 orders of magnitude difference.
3) Microwaves function because they build standing waves. You find that if you take the frequency of a microwave (printed on the back usually), measure the size of the cavity and run the numbers, it works out that it's of a size such that standing waves build up. Taking a magnetron out of the case makes it work very poorly, despite the power output.
4) Cellphones operate in bursts. They do a burst when they have something to transmit, then fall silent. Saves on batteries. That's not going to cut it for heating, you need continous output.
I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but you'll never get something like this to work. To even have a chance, you'd need to use a cordless 2.4GHz phone. It's at least in the right frequency ballpark, never mind all the other problems.
This has been widely discussed online and it is a pure hoax. The wymsey site also has such highly factual articles as hunting the wily tofu. Obligatory dig at slashdot editors elided for space.
Technically while the phone itself is omnidirectional, a cell site is not. It isn't highly accurate, however the tower does know what direction you're calling from and will transmit to your phone in close to that direction using panel antennas. This is also one way that cell towers achieve greater call density, since there is no need to transmit away from the phone (what good would that do). This frees up channels on the antennas your call isn't being transmitted on to handle other users, and allows it to direct more power to you and not in directions that clearly don't need it.
Of course the cell phone thing is ridiculous. Even IF you could get two modern (i.e. microwave-band) phones to operate at the full 2W continuously, you're a far cry from the hundreds of watts a microwave oven needs to cook the same eggs -- and a microwave oven has a resonation chamber to bounce the waves around until they're absorbed by the food. I suppose if you irradiated an egg using cell phones and could build a metal chamber to resonate those waves and contain them until absorption, you could eventually cook an egg. It would take a long time though, and for what it will cost you in either cell bills or fried phones you could have just bought a damn Egg McMuffin!