Where do you carry your cellphone, and how often do you use it?

[Wavebourn]

Cellphone pops popcorn kernels! - YouTube

See the movie...

[Pano]

Funny! There are tons of these on YouTube. All that pop the corn appear to be faked.

[DigitalJunkie]

[AKN]

Hi,

Cell Phone Popcorn Hoax Revealed. - Video

As expected .

[mickeymoose]

Hmm. How much time does it take to chek the time. But, fortunately, it stayed all in one color. E

[Wavebourn]

Originally Posted by AKN

Hi,

Cell Phone Popcorn Hoax Revealed. - Video

As expected .

Good link, thank you!

Here is one great response from it:

By Ted Twietmeyer
8-16-8

No one should try to duplicate the mad experiment where popcorn is made using a magnetron under a table.

Here are 7 good reasons NOT to do this:

1. Police officers have used radar guns to warm themselves in their cars in winter. Many of them now have testicular cancer.

2. Cell phones actually DO cause cancer. Studies FUNDED by cell phone companies show no connection. Other studies such as those done in Europe WITHOUT cell phone company funding have repeatedly shown a connection to CANCER. Our family lost a relative to cell phone cancer. The rapidly growing, agressive cancer tumor started EXACTLY WHERE THE ANTENNA WAS beside the head. Surgery didn't stop it. It turned into lethal lymphoma. Coincidence? I think not.

3. A cell phone has less than 1 watt of RF power. A magnetron from any microwave oven has a power output of 400 to 700 watts.

4. Exposure to microwave radiation at that power level even for a few seconds, can create cataracts in the eyes with possible permanent retinal damage. In other words, you could be completely blind, perhaps for life, in seconds. The idiot that removed the magnetron from the oven and wired it up to use under the table apparently seems to forget that magnetrons are used to COOK FOOD. A magnetron does not care whether it cooks chicken or people. Or their organs.

5. If the microwave beam that shoots up vertically through the table top hits a light fixture, a junction box inside a ceiling or even a metal object on the floor above or in an attic the RF energy will be reflected BACK DOWN into the room. And this reflection is quite efficient delivering almost 100% of the power back down into the room, similar to how light from a flashlight bounces off a mirror.

6. There are lethal voltages of about 2,500 volts in a microwave oven that power the magnetron with more than enough current to kill you. This is about the same voltage that was used in the electric chair.

7. The microwave energy is more than powerful enough to completely destroy cell phones or electronics near the exposed magnetron in seconds.

In short, this video should NEVER have been posted despite the ignorant comments that area shown below it.

Ted Twietmeyer
data4science.net

tedtw@frontiernet.net

[Wavebourn]

Originally Posted by DigitalJunkie

Can you imagine 20 years ago somebody asking a police officer on the street: "What time is it now? I forgot my telephone at home." Mental clinic guaranteed.

[AKN]

Hi,

All we need is a sense of scale, power and time. I fully agree with the quote obove from "Twietmeyer".

[benb]

Except for one small, important detail about pulling the magnetron out of the oven and trying to run it sitting by itself - the extension wire only runs the filament of the magnetron, which is I thnk about 1 or 2 volts. The metal case of the magnetron still needs to be connected to the microwave oven chassis. The filament also happens to be 1000-2500 volts negative in respect to the chassis, making that setup extremely dangerous just from the voltage available to whoever might touch it relative to the microwave oven chassis. Who knows if the lack of ground to the magnetron body was an oversight by someone who doesn't know where the current goes, or intentional by someone trying to keep viewers who might try it from cooking themselves and their friends (at this point, who cares about cooked popcorn an cellphones). Either way, there's deadly high voltage available.

Yes, posting that alleged "how it was done" video was stupid in several ways.

As to the assertion that cell phones cause cancer, I don't believe that claim, but I'm open to some hard evidence, or at least some strong statistical correlation. The comment had neither - it has a conspiracy theory about who funded such research, and a testimonial of ONE death. I would have expected to see executives dying from "cell phone cancer," er, brain tumors at a higher-than-average rate for the last quarter century or more, as well as teenagers likewise dying at a higher rate than previously seen. With all the data mining going on, this sort of thing would get noticed. No doubt many real health problems have already been discovered from such statistics.

[benb]

For something related, I recall the scares from circa 1990 about high-tension power transmission lines (and magnetic fields generated by CRT televisions and computer monitors, collectively VLF or Very Low Frequency RF radiation), and the belief they cause cancer. There were stories in EE Times about it (apparently repeating the mainstream press stories about lawsuits against utilities and against daycare centers who built under power lines), but there was also a report of one study of women who spent time going up utility poles as part of their jobs. On average they had a LOWER incidence of breast cancer than average, presumably because of the exercise they got from climbing utility poles. This powerlines-cause-cancer idea has also been lumped with cellphones and cell towers (which operate in the UHF range, about ten million times higher frequency).

Here's a story about the power line scare:
Frontline "Currents of Fear" synopsis:
FRONTLINE Programs -Currents of Fear | FRONTLINE | PBS
Transcript:
FRONTLINE: previous reports: transcripts: currents of fear | PBS