Using Aluminum Oxide Paint To Secure Wi-Fi

eldavojohn writes "The BBC reports on people using aluminum oxide in their paint to block Wi-Fi signals from leaving their home or business. Aluminum oxide resonates at the same frequency as Wi-Fi signals and other radio waves, blocking data from going outside a building. It's not a flawless solution, as it may also block AM/FM signals. You or your neighbors may be unwittingly using this already, as most pre-finished wood flooring uses aluminum oxide as a protective coating."

Comments

Does not resonate with me

[Ancient_Hacker]

Dunno where they got the crap about "resonates".

The paint might act as an electrostatic shield, or as a lossy dielectric, both effects that will attenuate RF signals.

  But resonate, no.

What is so hard about using WPA2?

[Anonymous Coward]

You select WPA2-PSK in your router's config, press "generate key", make a note of the generated key, connect your laptop to the encrypted WLAN, enter the key, done. No beacon disabling, radio frequency shielding, MAC filtering, DHCP disabling or other nonsense necessary. It's like people are trying to test every option but the right one.

Re:Extra protection?

[MozeeToby]

If I were a science teacher, I think I would have a weekly contest "What's wrong with this?". I'd give all the kids a website, newspaper article, creationist newsletter (probably lose my job over that one but oh well), etc... and have them come up with a list of all the reasons that it is nonsense. Start with easy stuff (like the difference between EM and Ionizing radiation) and move to more challanging things later (like what a valid sample size is). We need to expose kids to the idea that not everything they read is gospel, to think critically about what they read and see and actually apply their education.

Re:Cellphone reception?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Funny thing about electromagnetic resonance. The wavelength in vacuum / free air matters only ... in vacuum / free air. The wavelength of a signal in a different medium, with presumably different dielectric constant and impedance will be ... different! Water molecules are famously resonant at 2.45 GHz, that's where microwave ovens operate, despite the vacuum wavelength of 2.45 GHz photons being about 12 cm. The inter- and intra-molecular impedance makes H2O absorb those photons quite well. Water is quite rather opaque at those frequencies, despite being transparent at higher frequencies, say in the visible spectrum, and despite individual H2O molecules being many orders of magnitude smaller than the vacuum wavelength of 2.54 GHz photons.

Helpful hint for posters: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't answer questions as if you do.

Helpful hint for moderators: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't mod up posts full of word-salad wharrgarbl like "intra-molecular impedance."

http://www.howeverythingworks.org/prints.php?topic=microwave_ovens&page=4