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9th Grade Science Experiment: Garden Cress Won't Germinate Near Routers

Posted by Soulskill on from the are-the-routers-in-the-freezer dept.

New submitter SessionExpired writes "Five 9th graders from Denmark have shown that garden cress won't germinate when placed near a router (Google Translation of Danish original). Article text is in Danish, but the pictures illustrate their results. The exact mechanism is still unknown (Danish original), but experts have shown interest in reproducing the experiment."

3 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. near a WIRELESS router by Gothmolly · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thanks, Editor-dot, for not reviewing TFS. This was an experiment to test EM radition, its nothing to do with 'routers'. Believe it or not, there are things which are 'routers' that are not supplied by your ISP when you sign up for home broadband.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  2. A comment from a native dane by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They're using 2.4GHz wifi routers. 3G and LTE was not chosen because of data cost.
    The rooms are all locked, so only the teacher and the 5 pupils have access.
    They've done the tests twice with the same results.
    They've controlled temperature, water amount, sun radiation from windows and more factors, to control bias.

    The danish newspaper Ingeniøren (The Engineer) has the teacher Kim Horsevad explain in detail in the comments on their article on the subject: http://ing.dk/artikel/folkeskoleelever-vaekker-forsker-opsigt-mobilstraaling-forhindrer-karse-i-spire-158867#comment-529110

    His comment is REALLY long, so some other dane will have to translate if Google Translate doesn't cut it ;)

  3. Re:No reproduction by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

    The radio, and associated amplifiers, will generate the majority of the heat. Just look how much longer a cell phone will operate if you disable wireless. One must also take into consideration that wireless routers operate at higher power levels.

    Actually, cellphones are higher powered - I believe they top out at between 0.5-1W max transmit power. Your wireless router is typically anywhere from under 50mW to 100mW, though it's possible to get "long range" ones that do 250mW.

    Of course, a cellphone dynamically adjusts its power - in urban areas, it typically is close enough to a cell tower that it can crank the transmit power way down. This, of course, is to save battery (RF level amplifiers aren't efficient at all - they waste a lot of power). If you live in a poorly covered area, you'll note your battery life is a lot lower as a result of having to crank up the power to maintain the link.

    CDMA phones are interesting - the amount of power they use is proportional to usage as the more phones using it, the lower the SNR. You've hit the limit when everyone's transmitting at max power and the SNR is too low for successful correlation.