My students are claiming that if two or more cellphones are placed around an egg, the egg will eventually cook. I called foul and said I would research this. One student claimed to have tried it and said it took an hour and a half.
The phones have to be receiving a call of course.
This is really really easy to test. Bring in an egg. Surely you have at least four students with cell phones. Place two near the egg and use the other two to call the phones. Report back with findings.
Here you go - Snopes.
As you may have guessed, you were right to call foul.
You so need call him on his bluff!
If you teach any type of science class, offer him an unconditional ‘A’ if he can prove it in class with any number of cell phones. You supply the carton of eggs and the students gets to pick one. If the student does not succeed at all, he or she will be dropped down one letter grade from what they would have gotten otherwise. Anything approaching a fully cooked hard-boiled egg is the the test. See if the student takes you up on it.
That’s it - discourage them from testing hypotheses. The very essence of science!
If two active phones are required, why not have one of them call the other rather than bringing two additional phones into the experiment?
I am talking about the student that claims to have already done it. Scientists that lie like that also get stiff penalties. Asking for reproducible results is part of the scientific method (e.g. cold fusion) and students should be called on it early on before they do the same later when it can really hurt their careers.
These aren’t necessarily grad students. The OP could be talking about 7th graders for all we know. Even the cold fusion jerks weren’t openly made fun of until it was pretty much guaranteed that they were jerking the world around on purpose. They got A LOT of benefit of the doubt (except maybe the one guy who was working for Juan Peron, but that was understandable.) We know the kid is bullshitting but so what? Proving him wrong politely will do a lot more good than punishing him in the long run.
Those crazy Brits on Brainiac tried it with 100 cell phones and got no result other than a raw egg, so I think it’s safe to say it’s not possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1uu595F3c
If this worked then half the country would have hard-boiled brains by now.
I’m sorry, but you people are just plain wrong. It is entirely possible to cook an egg with two cell phones.
But it’s much better with bacon.
Or fowl, even.
This is correct, although you may need to wait for the sun to engulf the earth (or Yellowstone’s pyroclastic flows) in order to provide the heat. The cell phones are merely ornamentation in the process.
I suppose that depends on which came first - the chicken or the sporting misbehaviour.
Well, unless this is a college class (or senior high school class) this needs to be a demonstration for the whole class. And no punishing for being wrong. Send Cecil the results. Have them all write it up.
Amazing, isn’t it, how willing people are to believe a “neat” thing despite its being stupidly easy to verify with a simple test.
The problem is that this only works on the equinoxes, so the students will have to wait a few months if they want to get an A.
I really like fools errands.
A lot.
Even though they’re spreading misinformation by people that believe it… All in all my guilt is well overtaken by watching someone try to mix baking soda and Mountain Dew to get it to glow like a chemical glowstick.
“No… That’s not going to work.”
“But I saw it on youtube.”
“No… Its not going to work.”
“They used camera trickery… The real chemicals were put in at some point.”
“Its not working.”
“I told you so.”
This is actually a fabulous opportunity for a real world lesson not just in science but in critical thinking.
Ask for a volunteer to build the experiment and write it all up properly. Make it worth an extra 100% test grade, success or fail. Allow the student making the claim first crack at it. Offer other students a few extra credit points for volunteering their phones. That way you can have multiple trials running concurrently, perhaps a few with 4-8 phones to try and speed it up. Get the bluetooth networking fired up.
Combining this with energy transfer efficencies and stored energy systems crossing over into issues related to hybrid vehicles and such could make for an interesting couple days of class.