Jun 10 2008Videos: Popping Popcorn With Cell Phones

ZOMG thats unreal

Duh its unreal.... because it isnt REAL!

Uhhh, okay, you call it a fake but do not explain how they did it... Booooo. Until someone gives us a better explanation, still looks like the phones are the number one cause for the popping.

Anyone have an answer?

I'm concerned about all the phone usage, especially with kids these days. I think it's possible half the generation could be in hospital with brain tumors in 30 or 40 years. Even DECT cordless phones are bad when people spend hours on them every day.

heated table?

When I lived in Japan I had a heated table called a kotatsu. They're really common because not many houses have central heating. There's a heated element in the middle, under the tabletop. It's really low and you sit underneath it, keeping your legs warm as you watch wacky game shows in winter. I reckon that's what they've got right there.

so that's what happens to my brains when i use four cell phones at once

Heated table is the most likely thing.

I don't think cell phones would be able to do anything with such minimal heat. Honestly, the only thing that gets hot is my cell phone's charger, and that's if I talk on it for 4+ hours with it plugged in.

Talking is the only way I'm not economic.

Notice in every video one phone is flipped on its face in fact the first 2 videos have the same type of phone.

1, 3, 4 what are people, some sort of technology challenged newbies? Why are you here?

Hey Trev, you are such a smart guy... I think I was just asking for an explanation... Disappointed that mr. geekology writer would post up a 'hoax' with no actual explanation for why it's a hoax...

@8:

A microwave oven doesn't produce any heat either, and it still gets your meal warm. It works by exciting one of the resonance modes of water molecules (that resonance mode is around 2.4ghz, which is the frequency used by microwave ovens, mobile phones and wireless networks. That's why a cellphone 'should' lose its signal when put in a microwave oven [given the shielding is good enough as it should be]), which then dissipate their energy by exciting (heating) neighboring (non-water) molecules.
Anyway, 'theoretically' it is possible to heat anything containing water (or other substances with a resonance at around 2.4ghz) with a mobile phone, but the power output is probably too small, somewhere around a few hundred mW, while a microwave oven puts out ~1kW and still needs a while to heat whatever you put in it.

I'm flattered, but I don't have any answer for this, sorry!

Oh! Maybe it's this new genetically-modified self-popping corn! It pops when you send it an SMS.

gooks are crazy

Shut up Trevor, I never said I believed the videos were real either, just they made me think about the microwave emissions from phones directly to your head (or balls for men keeping a phone in your pocket).

@12 That's the worrying part, that 2.4 ghz is the resonant frequency of water and what are our brains mostly made up of? Water.

its actually quite obvious what is going on here, David Bowie is sitting behind a curtain making it happen.

FAKE.

Oh, wait...

These videos may not be real, but what is real the threat posed to our nation's children by "Mr. Slippy Fist" aka Tom Frost. We must band together to stop him, or there will be no next generation to spark debate by producing these utterly entertaining viral videos. If Tom Frost has his way, the only videos available online will be the evidence of his stomach turning crimes.

David Bowie frightens me.

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

http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=423337

blp - What you said was you were worried about something, without any evidence, that shows a basic non-understanding of the technology, which is what Trevor responded to. You're also missing the point CD made which is that a cellphone works on milliwatts (one-thousandth of a watt or 1mW= 1/1000W) and a microwave oven works on kilowatts (or one-thousands watts or 1kW=1000W). To heat the water in a kernal to the point where it explodes, a 750kW microwave oven takes about a full minute. To do the same with milliwatts would take around 750 million minutes (if I'm doing the napkin math correctly), not accounting for the dissipation of heat or other real-world physics. A heated cup of water doesn't stay hot for hours, does it?

It's an order of magnitude thing, just like walking one minute out in the sun is quite different from 5 hours laying out in the sun.
What you're saying is the equivalent of "we need to fear drops of water because they are in hurricanes." Which is why you're being called a n00b.

This is totally bogus. Myself and a group of friends used over 16 different cell phones in a slew of combinations to debunk these videos. even with 6 cell phones pointing at the kernels there wasn't even a tremor. The table has got to be heated or the kernels have been tampered with and were ready to pop before put on the table. Don't believe the hype....

Why hasn't anyone considered the possible use of CGI?

maxie, you really are a retard

@21, you're obviously the n00b who has no idea what your talking about. A 750 kilowatt microwave oven, other than instantly tripping your home's electricity supply, could burn a frozen turkey to a crisp in less than a second!
There's plenty of evidence to be concerned about, that being the figures of brain tumors and severe memory loss in heavy cell phone users compared to non cell phone users.
Because I'm a nice guy I'll still care for all you ignorant n00bs in the hospital after your brain surgery.

@22: You win this. Next time, get some video of it to prove it to people who are anti-technological.

Whoever believes it's possible in any way: go back to the rainforest, put your paint back on, and continue shooting at aircrafts.

blp - *sigh* Yes, you're right. I should have double-checked microwave wattages before posting. Silly me for believing CD had the right numbers. Mea Culpa.

You're still off by a magnatude of thousands. Countertop microwave ovens are frequently 750 to 1000 watts. And here is a nice link explaining why a cell phone battery doesn't have enough power to warm an egg, let alone pop corn.

As for your "evidence", I note that you haven't linked to the studies. Probably because they don't exist in medical journals. My only conclusion can be that you were born in the mid-eighties, as this is the same bloody argument that came up for power-lines in the seventies.

Prove your point - show that there is a rise in the incidents of brain cancer or testicular cancer and that the exclusive factor to justify the increase is cell phone use. Link to the medical study that shows the incidence of memory loss. Show your info. I will gladly swallow my words if you can provide a link to a peer reviewed study in a modern medical journal. Or maybe a radiation one.

The best you'll be able to present, I predict, is that there are studies that "warrant further investigation". Since you can't prove a negative in the scientific method, the best that can be done is fail to prove otherwise a number of times.

Judging by your vehement response, I'm guessing that either you're a conspiracy theorist, in which case logic and facts are wasted as you're not really interested in a real discussion, or the astroturf troll who started this idiot video campaign.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. What is it you're promoting? A new Redenbacher product? Nokia and Samsung?

"The best you'll be able to present, I predict, is that there are studies that "warrant further investigation". Don't they always when big corporations are involved? Money talks.

http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/index.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGoLledQoYE

blp -

First off, let me apologize. Reading back through my posts, I was inordinately rude. You are probably someone who is concerned and trying to bring up a topic of conversation, only to have jerks like me jump all over you for mentioning it. I can only attribute this to my frustration that we can't impeach that f*$&#r Bush even with 35 counts against him. Absolutely not your fault and you shouldn't be the vent for my anger. I'm sorry.

Having said that, "warrant further investigation" is not corporate speak. It is scientist speak. Scientists say that when they see something in the data that is

different from what is expected, but don't have enough information to make a real conclusion. It could be a statistical anomaly, or it could actually be a pattern - there's just not enough data to tell.

I'm still reading through the post you've presented, but I'm already seeing signs that it's intellectual rigor is suspect. Take this paragraph:

"Other scientific review bodies and agencies have reached different conclusions than we have by adopting standards of evidence so unreasonably high as to exclude any conclusions likely to lead to new public safety limits."

I'm looking at the phrase "unreasonably high". This is an opinion, and for which no definition has been provided. Dismissing other peer reviewed articles without showing why the data which is excluded is significant, is dishonest and leans toward rhetoric. For example, the most popular argument against Global Warming (or Climatic change, take your pick) says that the temperature data from the past 150 years doesn't support the hypothesis that increased CO2 levels cause increased temperatures as there have been cool periods between then and now. All fine and good, but if you look at the larger data set expanding several hundred thousand years, those dips are insignificant in the greater trend. If you get up really, really close to a model, you can find skin imperfections and big pores, etc, etc. It's all a matter of what part of the data you're looking at.

Here's another phrase that makes me skeptical: "Some experts keep saying that all studies have to be consistent (turn out the same way
every time) before they are comfortable saying an effect exists."

That would be the scientific process. If you can't duplicate the results under the same conditions, than it does not follow that the conditions create the results. That's basic logic. The job of the scientist is to discover what conditions create what results. Again, this is where "further investigation is warranted" comes from. There are results, but the scientists still don't know what ACTUALLY cause them. Enacting public policy without facts to back it up, or upon a hunch, is irresponsible at best. It's the kind of thinking that witch hunts are based on.

Or how about this: "Scientists and public health policy experts use very different definitions of the standard of evidence used to judge the science, so they come to different conclusions about what to do. Scientists do have a role, but it is not exclusive and other opinions matter."

Hogwash. Scientists don't determine policy, they determine how things work. It's up to policy makers to decide what to do with that information.

Or this: "The strength of human epidemiological studies reporting risks from ELF and RF exposures, but animal studies don’t show a strong toxic effect." Animals are not that different from humans. The entirety of medical knowledge is based on this fact. Some animals are closer to us in genetics than others, which is what allows us to see the efficacy of treatment and toxicity without risking a human life. It's what allowed humans to receive heart transplants from baboons. If gliomas can't be replicated in a controlled environment with animals, where exposure to microwaves can be regulated and measured, then the strong evidence is that those frequencies probably don't cause the gliomas.

My last post had many links, but apparently you're only allowed 3, else they eliminate all of them. So here are my three: Report from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland

Abstract in International Journal of Cancer regarding gliomas and cellphone use. A link to the full text is on the page.

A little dated, but this FDA page explains more about scientific process and what fears people have and how they develop. Keep in mind while reading that it was written in 2000, so it is 7 years out of date while the Journal of Cancer article was from January of '07.

Hopefully that provides a little more grounding for a real discussion. Again I apologize for the attitude of my earlier responses. It was unwarranted. I hope you have a pleasant day!

Oh for christ's sake, geekologie.

Here are the links, because apparently putting it in an a href is just too complex for the site:

Finland
http://www.stuk.fi/stuk/tiedotteet/en_GB/news_440/

Cancer Journal
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/114072761/abstract

FDA

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/600_phone.html

@Scrmnviking: I used the right numbers because I wrote '~1kW' (and 750W is roughly 1kW while 750kW is far from it ;)

CD - obviously, I need to slow down and read closer. Sorry!

this video show how it's done

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1399627/cell_phone_popcorn_hoax_revealed/