yessir, this is your brain on the cell-phone.....any questions??-why kids nowadays have the mind of some bizarre hive???

Wait till the GTA studies are published, and the correlations therein....

They cooked chickens in front of the communications dishes on air craft carriers, innit???

Choggie's insightful analysis aside, a supernerd at http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=423337 has already applied the science required to debunk it - "Popcorn pops because the water in it turns to steam and a kernel is about 14% water. So, if we assume a kernel of popcorn weighs 1 gram, it has 0.13 grams of water. Heat that water from 30�C to 100�C would take:

(0.14g)*(100�C-3 to turn the water to steam requires he latent heat of vaporization, which is 2259J/g.

2259J*0.14g= 316J for a total of 316J 41J = 357J.

Wattage = Joules/seconds. If it took about 5 seconds to turn the water in the popcorn kernel to steam, then the wattage required was:

357J/5sec = 71W assuming all power from the cell phone transmitter went into the kernel.

Cell phones typically have 0.75W-1W transmitters in them. With a 1W transmitter, it would take,

334J/1W = 334secs, if all power is transfered to the kernel.

Conclusion: since the corn is popping in 5 seconds... completely fake.

edit - as pointed out, corn kernels weigh about 0.25g and there are 4 phones which could be up to 2W each. Therefore, the energy hitting the corn could be 16 times greater. But the other assumption (that all the power is focussed into the water content of just 1 kernel) is most likely wrong by a factor of 100 or more." - NOBODY PANIC

I'm totally doing this experiment myself.

Damn AofC, you keep believing everything you read, why, the useless knowledge portion of yer skull is gonna 'splode!!!

>> ^choggie:
Damn AofC, you keep believing everything you read, why, the useless knowledge portion of yer skull is gonna 'splode!!!


Pot, meet kettle.

I wish this was true! Then I could blame my cell phone for my singed looking split end hair!

"You having a bad hair day today? " " No, my hair was GREAT this morning, but then I got a cell phone call.."

Even the microwave takes a minute or two before the popcorn starts actually popping. Fake-ity fake.

Yeah, totally *lies

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by djsunkid.

This reminds me of the story of the two Russian journalists who cooked an egg using two cellphones...
http://yusuf.asgerally.com/?p=42



Don't wanna scare anyone but...

2 waves of the same frequency create a standing wave (harmonic), DRAMATICALLY increasing the amplitude. Just by doubling the amplitude you will quadruple the energy, quadrupling the amplitude creates a 16-fold increase in the energy carried by the wave - (energy = amplitude squared)

It would require about 100 watts to heat the water enough to pop the corn (NOT 71watts as mentioned above, it takes 150-180 degrees C to pop corn not 100)

So! Who wants to do the math *properly*, not like that completely wrong mess posted above?

Here's the ratios:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave_ratio

Assume the minimum 0.75 watt magnetron in the cellphone.

Guys, there's a bucketload of clips on youtube of people doing this. They can't *all* be fake?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cellphone+popcorn&search_type=&aq=f

Pay really close attention at 28-30 seconds into this.
[Edit: the teleporting kernel makes my spidey sense tingle]

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Hmm, I don't know - looks pretty real, at the 28-30 mark that AoC describes, it has that reversed film look - though can't see how that would help.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Just watched the linked Youtube videos. I think this is real.

Hmm. I think its real. If a bird flies in front of one of my radars while its radiating, it will get cooked by the time it reaches the other side. (if its close enough to the radar)

Hang on a second, though... when a cell phone rings it is not transmitting, just receiving, right? The ringing certainly wouldn't be radiation! Could the waves from the satellite (or tower or whatever?) concentrating on/directed at the phones (4 at once at who knows what power?) cause this at all????
I have no idea how these things work...

FAKE. Just tried it. Didn't work. I had 2 phones calling the other 2 phones didn't work. So i answered with the other 2 phones so they were all actively transmitting and receiving. It didn't work.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Might depend on the type of phone - CDMA vs GSM

The science tidbit theaceofclubs posted is pretty much spot on. There simply isn't enough power in a cellphone to cook a kernel that fast, even if you assume every joule of energy leaving the phone goes into the kernel (which is pretty much impossible).

That's not to say it's not worth doing a study on the health effects of longterm exposure to cellphone "radiation", but they're just low-power radios, and there's not a lot new about that.

"More than 1 of the people on earth have made a video of this, IT MUST BE TRUE!" come on

I know, lie down onna table, atta party, and have all your friends place their cellphones in a sunburst array around your head.....have them all dial out at once, you doubters should feel a tingle, which should be enough to convince you that your friends attention is at least part of the sensation you feel between your eyes-perhaps yer pineal gland will activate long enough for your third eye to wink at itself.......

Okay, how about this theory:

What we see is real, but we are falling for misdirection.

The clunky white "phone" may be something else which actually emits microwaves of the intensity to cook the kernels.

I thought it looked out of place in the vid, but was surprised to see a very similar device in the copycat vid here

Seems incredibly fake. Several others on YT have tried it and failed. One of them burned up the table cloth with the lighter they were using under the table.

Everyone who succeeds does the same overacting and most importantly, in all the successful ones they cut away after the kernels are placed on the table. They are probably setting something up during this cutaway.

Lots of people faking something doesn't make it real.

*shenanigans

There isn't enough power in one cellphone to cook the kernel, the point is that there are two or more phones accumulatively interfering.

It won't work with all phones, it will only work if all the phones transmit on the exact same frequency - the key is the you need 2 transmitters to set up a standing wave harmonic which increases the amplitude many times, in turn increasing the amount of energy exponentially (as a square of the amplitude).

Cellphones need to transmit back to the tower after each packet they recieve.

I found one other person so far who has also realised that this is a standing wave harmonic causing the boost in energy
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/4969270/

And here are some related studies:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080214144349.htm
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=934914&isnumber=20229
http://www.content4reprint.com/health/diseases-and-conditions/swedish-study-links-brain-damage-to-cell-phone-radiation.htm
http://www.protectingourhealth.org/newscience/learning/2003/2003-0129salfordetal.htm

After watching several of the successful videos I've figured it out.

In all of them there is one odd phone that seems out of place. It's the clunky white one that always appears button-side down, when in fact it probably has no buttons. In most of them (including the video on this page) this "phone" is always with it's backside to the camera and when they cutaway is probably when they activate it.

It must be some kind of lighter or other heat-emitting device that's probably common or only available in Europe/Japan, hence all success only happening in mostly non-US vids.

Myth *busted.

[edit]
Guess I should read all the comments before commenting. Looks like dgandhi realized the same thing.

And hello, since when was any sort of radiation mono-directional? I.E. - pointing a cellphone in a certain direction doesn't do shit as far as where the waves go.

[votewhore]
http://www.videosift.com/video/Brainiacs-using-cell-phones-to-cook-shit-is-a-load-of-shit
[/votewhore]

Let's not all forget - http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp

>> ^MarineGunrock:
And hello, since when was any sort of radiation mono-directional? I.E. - pointing a cellphone in a certain direction doesn't do shit as far as where the waves go.
[votewhore]
http://www.videosift.com/video/Brainiacs-using-cell-p
hones-to-cook-shit-is-a-load-of-shit
[/votewhore]


I wouldn't take Braniac at their word, either. They flat out lied on their Alkali metal clip (posted here, somewhere, I think).

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/AlkaliBangs/index.html

The problem with the standing wave amplification theory is that it would require the kernel to be at a point where the waves are interfering constructively... and they seem to be all scattered about randomly. With interfering waves you create points where the waves interfere constructively (add to eachother) but you will also end up with points where they are interfering destructively (canceling each other out) so even though the energy at a specific point may be amplified the energy at an adjacent node will be diminished (relative to one phone).


You have the same problem in a microwave ( ever end up with cold spots in your burrito? ).

In short, the net energy of the system is not increased by wave interference (luckily, otherwise it would violate known physical laws )... so we're still dealing with 8W of undirected microwave energy in the system. Considering that the energy diminishes at a rate of 1/(4pi r^2) for a unidirectional antennae... you're probably looking at less than 1000th of that energy being transferred to the kernel. Considering that most cellphones have a dipole antenna which is nowhere near unidirectional (think about how you hold a cellphone when you use it, and where you want the signal energy to go... it's generally not straight up or straight down) I'd be confident saying they're effectively receiving no energy.

I call BS

Common sense 101:
Even if we throw all the science bits out the window for a second, how can you, for the love of God, believe that something meant to be stuck to your head for up to four hours in a row would be allowed for sale if it could fry something in less than five seconds when paired with a couple similar devices? No, really.

I can't say for sure that this is fake. However, I can come up with a good way to do this trick if it is, in fact, fake: there is a microwave with the door taken off underneath the table, pointing upwards.

OK... firstly a) How did this one get sifted and mine of a different vid of the same 'trick' posted previously not

And I'm with the others with the white phone being the culprit... good work on spotting that. I had wondered when I watched one why that phone was face down, but didn't notice the same thing in the others... that'll turn out to be it, well done.

And there are a number of videos now showing people trying it and nothing happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-b-bKSbUao is one.


Here's another version I hadn't seen before, and yup, once again, there's a phone, upside down, white... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLS2WJERQ0&NR=1

Also, apparently all the original videos were posted by the one user within minutes of each other, and they're the only videos of that user. Here's the user: http://www.youtube.com/user/benzin513 4 videos, all with that suspicious white turned down phone. Actually the one that's turned down is different each time, but there is always one.

>> ^scottwnewton:
I can't say for sure that this is fake. However, I can come up with a good way to do this trick if it is, in fact, fake: there is a microwave with the door taken off underneath the table, pointing upwards.


Ya, that would work, except we've all see what happens when you expose a cellphone to the microwave. Not to mention, I seem to recall that a microwave doesn't heat properly if the door is not affixed to provide proper triangulation or something. Kinda like leaving the windows open with the AC on.

>> ^choggie:
They cooked chickens in front of the communications dishes on air craft carriers, innit???


They actually tried this on Mythbusters and it didn't work. Myth busted.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/cellphones-cant.html

Covers most of the arguments already made here that it's fake. Just a matter of time before a some marketing company cops to it and this becomes * viral.

You people are funny.

If this was true it would never had made it to the market.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ9GNr-7a0U

I don't want to alarm anybody, but i was just on the phone and some corn just popped out of my ear.

The amplitude is only double at the anti-node of a standing wave at nodes the amplitude is 0. So the total energy in the system is constant (conservation of energy). Besides standing waves don't transfer energy.

>> ^Irishman:
This reminds me of the story of the two Russian journalists who cooked an egg using two cellphones...
http://yusuf.asgerally.com/?p=42

Don't wanna scare anyone but...
2 waves of the same frequency create a standing wave (harmonic), DRAMATICALLY increasing the amplitude. Just by doubling the amplitude you will quadruple the energy, quadrupling the amplitude creates a 16-fold increase in the energy carried by the wave - (energy = amplitude squared)
It would require about 100 watts to heat the water enough to pop the corn (NOT 71watts as mentioned above, it takes 150-180 degrees C to pop corn not 100)
So! Who wants to do the math properly , not like that completely wrong mess posted above?
Here's the ratios:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave_ratio
Assume the minimum 0.75 watt magnetron in the cellphone.

EVERYONE
According to an article on Wired, a headset company has fessed up to creating this *viral video.

Bluetooth headset retailer Cardo Systems has claimed ownership of the hot viral videos that show people appearing to pop popcorn with their cellphones.

In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday titled "Cellphone Popcorn Mystery Resolved," (embedded, right) an advert for the company's line of headsets follows the grainy footage of friends aiming phones at uncooked corn that's been tallying millions of views on YouTube.

"The videos are spreading like wildfire, and becoming something of an urban legend," said Kathryn Rhodes, the national marketing manager at Cardo Systems in a phone interview Thursday. "[The viral-marketing campaign] been really successful at capturing the attention of all different kinds of users."

Adding video to channels (Viral) - requested by doogle.

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rasch187 has fixed this video's dead embed code - no Power Points awarded because rasch187's points are already fully charged.

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