Boil an egg (instead of your brain) with your cellphones

No time to cook 'cause you spend all your time reading about gadgets? Never fear, Eggadget is here. See, now you can combine your wanton culinary yearnings with your lust for the hi-tech by cooking an egg with two mobile phones. Really, at least that's what these kids are boasting — hell, they even provide step-by-step instruction on how it's done. But as usual, there is the cabal of haters who say you can't. Guess our readers will have to shed the ever-loving-light of truth over this matter and possibly, just possibly prove once and for all whether cellphones are dangerous/not-dangerous.

[Via textually.org]

[64bProphet @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I'm doubtful myself... however this probably won't stop me from trying it tonight...

[Tupper @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This is your brain.
This is your brain on CDMA.

questions??

[Houghtelin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Thats hilarious. Although I'm not a large fan of plain eggs. Wheres the tutorial for omelets?

[MattFoleyJr @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

There is no way... But, I may have to try this out of boredom tonight... If anyone else tries it, please make a video recording!!

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I don't know, they say engergy is energy, and I certainly know my first cell phone got pretty freakin' HOT (almost dangerously so) to the touch, and it had a HUGE battery allowing 7 - 8 hours of talk time (WAYYY back in late '98). If you somehow took all the energy in THAT battery and applied it in the right way, you could probably cook an egg.

Whether or not cell phone hardware is up to the task is anyones guess though...

[James @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I can't believe this junk is even posted here it's so obviously fake.

If you have any doubt whatsoever they did a test similar to this on the BBC with 15 phones - still didn't cook the egg.

[Honifer @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

On the SkyOne show Brainiac: Science Abuse, they took 100 mobile phones, piled them on and around the egg and tried to boil itby calling them all at once. It didn't even nearly work.

I think these kids give pseudo-science a bad name.

[Mrs Miggins @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Wow! Just tried it - the egg wasn't done after 3 mins but it was cookin' alright. Give it 5 or 6 mins I reckon.

[Frangible @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Let's think about this for a minute. Even *IF* 100% of the radiant energy of the phone (2 watts) was being tranferred to heat, and I bet it's actually less than 1%, 2 watts cannot boil an egg in 3 minutes. An 800 watt microwave can't boil water that fast! I can't believe trite like this was even posted.

[Eric @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Cell phones communicate with the cell tower, not each other. The egg shouldn't be between the phones, it should be between the phone(s) and the tower for this to even have a snowballs chance in hell of working. Furthermore, a cell phone only spits out 2W of power for *very* short intervals. As a matter of fact, cell phones try really hard to minimize their output power to A) conserve battery life and B) play nice with the other phones on the network. You don't want a phone close to the tower blasting all the other phone signals into oblivion.

In short, these kids are on crack.

[Zex_Suik @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This is possible. We used to do this in the army except with the OE254 antennas (tall antennas that look like they have a giant spider on them) and hotdogs. You lay the antenna on the ground and lay the hot dog on a block of wood or something that won't blow up about a foot or two from the center of the antenna 'legs' then you key the mic. When the antenna releases the radio waves it also releases shorter waves like a microwave thus cooking the hotdog.

Same concept with the phones, the radio is important as it creates feedback between the two phones which creates the right strength to cook the eggs.

[xenonflx @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

My physics A level says....um...No.

[Tribute @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I'd have better luck trying to cook an egg with my Midland GXT300 2 way radios that communicate directly with each other, not third partys. They're going to spit out more power, but they haven't a chance of cooking an egg.
Give it 10 years

[homer @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

what's the radio for?

[gbk @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

RE: #7: Let me start by saying I believe this to be pure bunk. That being said, comparing this to the energy required to boil an equivalent amount of water is not appropriate. Microwaves work by (painfully dumbed down version) making the bonds in molecules vibrate. Depending on the bond energy, different bonds will resonate more strongly. This energy will in turn be dissipated as heat. The bonds in sugar and fat molecules tend to resonate much more strongly. A better comparison would be to a cup of sugar saturated water. Taking this into consideration, the required energy to boil an egg is likely lower than your example. That being said, there's no way a pair of cell phones emit enough energy to boil an egg.

[Hmmm @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I agree with #9, but that begs a question... if you throw an egg into the air in front of the transmitters of a cell phone tower, does the egg return to Earth cooked or not?

[Puddleboy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This idea is unacceptable on so many levels.

First of all, whoever thought this up does not have any idea how a cell phone works. They mistakenly think that the radio waves from the two phones travel directly toward each other through the egg (based on the chosen cellphone position). The radio waves from a cell phone travel every direction, 360 degrees. The position of the two phones to the egg should only be a basis of distance (the closer the better). This flawed understanding of cellphone basics is just one problem with the "fry an egg with a cellphone" rumor.

[Dennis Pallett @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Like #7 said, this was tested by Brainiac, and they used 100 phones. The egg wasn't even warm.

[Viney @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I see another episode of Mythbusters in the works...

[Matt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

What's the radio for?

[confusatron @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

The site also has a fascinating story about tofu hunters...

(it's a *joke*, people!)

[ben @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

i think mythbusters should try this for sure..

[Apocalyst @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

With the exception of the old Moto brick phone and the Blaupunkt 1.2 watt handhelds, all handheld mobile cellular phones sold in US are 0.6 watt. I would venture to say that you could cook the egg with the heat generated by draining/charging the battery before it would cook via microwaves radiation.

[William @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

@ #13 and #18:
It's a joke. It's not the cell phones boiling the egg - it's the radio!

;-)

[lswitch @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

an egg weighs about 70g
to cook it you need to raise it's temp about 60 deg C
This will take about 4200 calories of energy (~17,500 joules) absorbed by egg.

1 watt = 1 joule/sec

2 phones @0.6W each x 10% transmitting energy absorbed (VERY generous) = 0.12 W (joules/s)

cooking takes ~146000 seconds/2430 minutes/40.5 hours - that's if there is NO heat dissipation of the egg into the air.

[Ethos @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I'm fairly sure this won't work, simply because of the low power output.

But to answer a couple of comments/questions:

"What's the radio for?"
It takes more power to transmit sound then to transmit silence. The radio is there to provide constant noise to up the amount of power the phones require to send/receive. Since both phones are in the same room with the radio they will be echoing each other. I can see the reasoning that the power output by the phones would be a bit higher then a normal conversation.

"Cell phones communicate with the cell tower, not each other"
Spot on. - Charlie from Lost.

This is true, so the part about putting it about 1/2 inch from the egg vs getting it as close as possible doesn't make any sense.

[Luke @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I call total BS... ALTHOUGH... I used to have a lot of fun umm... "testing" my old ericsson 1228 where you could get it to function as a radio -very harsh on the battery-

(BTW, I don't live anywhere near the US)

[Brian @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

obviously the energy that cooks the egg comes from the laser beams that shoot out of your eyes if you stare at an egg for more than 3 minutes. no one can prove me wrong because no one would admit to staring at an egg that long to test my theory *maniacle laughter*

[Brainiac @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

this is pure !"�$^$ it wont work ok end this talk alright.

[Charles Ivermee @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Hey you guys caused me 1700 hits so far! So I'll forgive the borrowing of the technical illustration :)

This page, which I wrote in 2000, is doing the rounds and has been hit 26,000 times this week!

Thanks!


Charlie.

[Charles Ivermee @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I meant to add that last year I came across the 'information' from that page incorporated as fact into a UK schools physics revision site. Needless to say they pulled the page and sacked the editor.