i have noticed my cell phone interferes with computer screens. does this harm the screen? also, does this interference harm the computer itself?
also, does anyone know what this interference is? i hear a static tick sometimes, but usually just a fluctuation in screen.
Any hunk of wire will act as a receiving antenna for radio signals, and your cell phone uses radio signals, so all of the little bits of wire inside your monitor and computer act as itty bitty antennas that pick up some of the signal. In most cases the signal received is too weak to cause harm. This is especially true of digital signals, because the nature of digital signals is that below one level its a zero and above that level its a one, so you have to add enough energy to the signal to throw it above or below this threshold. Analog signals aren’t quite as forgiving, and your monitor uses analog signals to draw the screen. Any noise added to an analog signal ends up as noise in whatever that signal does. It doesn’t get filtered off like it would in a digital signal.
Cell phones and walkie-talkies can cause data in a computer to get corrupted and at the most extreme can even cause the computer to crash. Usually though, because of the case around the computer and the nature of digital signals in general, the cell phone doesn’t cause the computer any harm at all.
Cell phones have magnets in the speakers right? A magnet will cause pretty rainbow effect on an old TV, this was endlessly amussing to me as a teenager. This might have something to do with it, I don’t know for sure.
Nope NotBob13, the effect of the magnets in the speakers would be negligible.
ECG has the straight dope (as usual when it comes to electronics/computers).
I used to have a psion PDA, and in the manual it said specifically not to have it too close to your mobile phone, as it can be fried! The relatively strong EM fields generated by the mobile phone can induce currents in the PDA that are strong enough to fry sensitive electronics.
I believe that more modern PDAs are better shielded, but I still try to keep my phone in a different pocket from my PDA.
Damage no -
But poor trader of shots gets a call from people using there mobile constantly from their desk saying " Your company keeps on disconecting me from the internet" blah blah blah…
Moral of the story.
If you need ot use a mobile phone and a computer at the same time … never mind it was nasty.
Mobile phone with interfere with any wires … hmm pace makers ??
Yep, that can happen. The older pacemakes used to be much more succeptible to this type of thing. That’s why there are warnings in restaurants that use microwave ovens. New pacemakers are designed to minimize that sort of thing but still I wouldn’t keep a cell phone in my shirt pocket if I had an electronic ticker in my chest.