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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.""
...but the little foot icon looks astonishingly like an old rotary telephone today.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
6. Phone A will now be talking to Phone B whilst Phone B will be talking to Phone A.
I love urban legend as much as the next guy, but this isn't exactly true. These are cell phones not two-way radios. Phone A will be talking to a cell phone tower, whilst phone B is talking to a cell phone tower, whilst each cell phone tower is talking to the two phones respectively. There is no reason to think that you are forming some sort of ultra powerful death beam between the two phones by placing them in close proximity to one another. Having said that, if I was being attacked by a giant stay puff marshmallow man, I might give this a shot as a last resort.
Ha! Like they expect us to believe th -- OOOH! Shiny!
...don't talk on two cell phones simultaneously.
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
Don't ever put two cell phones in your front pant pockets. You might cook your eggs but no one will ever know. And if you have two cell phones in your back pant pockets, your ass will catch on fire and everyone will laugh at you. Life is a cruel master.
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.
i'm still using my xbox charger. it's more versatile, i can cook pizza too
EVER.
It has none of the charm or actual science of Mythbusters and yet the people who make it think they're the coolest, funniest, sexiest people in the world. What they don't realise is that they're actually English.
Read Pynchon.
5. Crack an egg on the phone.
#5 might be closer to a solution than you guess.
I, like others, RTFA, and along with everyone else who'd like their 30 seconds of "WTF" back, here's a way that might actually work.
1) Remove batteries from phones. ...but it's within the right order of magnitude to cook an egg, particularly because the low internal resistance of such batteries allows for very high current.
2) You've got between 1 and 2 amp-hours of 12 volts to work with.
3) You need to get the yolk to around 63C for soft-boiling, and from 20C room temperature, that'll take you around 15-20kJ of energy. Yeah, I've skipped a bit.
4)
Crack one egg onto one phone - you'll cook something as you short the entire battery out through a pile of egg. If you used the battery as a swizzle stick, constantly stirring the egg mess, and constantly scraping the battery terminals free of solidified gunk, you'll generate a decent amount of heat in the gunk. (You'll also probably electrolyze some of the stuff in the egg, so I wouldn't recommend trying this at home - FSM-only-knows what kind of stuff will show up at the battery terminals beyond hydrogen and oxygen.)
At worst, you'll end up with a partially-toxic, soupy, warmed-over mess with a few chunks of scrambled egg in it.
6) If you've got enough surplus energy (like, say, 100kJ to work with), break up the battery packs, use them to power a small hot plate or peltier unit, (preferably with 12V, but if you've got even more surplus energy in the battery packs to waste on conversions, you could use a converter to turn 12VDC into 120VAC), and power your heater with that.
Crack the egg onto the hot plate, and you'll end up with a light fluffy omelette.
Either way, you're way ahead of the author of the original link.
This really works! I've done it!
And, for the first time since yesterday, I am offering for sale a revolutionary new product that will protect your precious head from the same egg-cooking x-rays that make you breakfast.
For three small payments of $19.95, you can block the radiation emitting from your cell phone by adding this small device to the back of your phone. The unique lattice-like orientation of the pantented gold-copper-lead electrical conduits create an electrical "net" around your phone, forcing the dangerous radiation to be emitted directly up into the sky instead of into your brain! Simply peel the backing off the product and affix it to the back of your phone, between the phone and the battery. Be sure to read the manual for proper placement, because if you are even a fraction of an inch off, you won't get the proper protection you deserve. If you are feeling nervous about doing it yourself, I also offer a service to install this device on your phone for you, for only two additional payments of $19.95 each, plus postage. Just send me your phone and rest easy!
But wait! Call now, and I will throw in, completely free of charge, a cell phone privacy guard. This handy device fits over the mouthpiece of the phone and prevents malicious hackers from listening in on your calls by scrambling your signal. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
First one hundred callers receive a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge as a FREE GIFT!
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Thats funky. I wonder how many eggs I cook every day while im chatting with my GF...
Two, if you keep your phone in your front pants pocket.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Uh. Huh. Let's see ... an egg is, oh, say 50 grams. So it takes 50 calories to raise the temp of the egg by 1C. and a hard-boiled egg is more or less at equilibrium with boiling water, so the minimum would be something like 70×50 calories, and 4.2 joules/calorie, so its going to take MINIMUM 14,700 joules.
60 joules to the watt-minute. 720 joules in 12 watt-minutes. 720 joules < 14,700 joules.
Check: it takes about 1 minute for my 700 watt microwave to cook 1 egg. 700 watt-minutes is 42,000 joules. 720 joules < 42,000 joules.
I call bullshit.
It is EXTREMELY irresponsible to post such stupid stuff here - don't you realise that soon this will be duped several times on Digg and then other Diggers will post it to their blogs, while others look for someone (or a cell phone company) to blame, and will start wrapping their phones or heads in tinfoil - heck, some Diggers will probably TRY and cook an egg and may get salmonella from the eggs on their fingers, which they will transfer to their mouths when they suck their thumbs and so will end up needing antibiotics.
For the sake of humanity (Diggmanity?) *** --No Digg ***.
I better go warn them before it's too late.....
AT&ROFLMAO
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.
You mean a McGriddle?
Ludwig Wittgenstein