I don’t think teeth have anything to do with it. I hear faint radio frequently. It’s simply a function of a little tinnitis. Some people get ringing in their ears from tinnitis, and some people hear what sounds like a faint radio or TV sound. I actually get both or either one from time to time.
I’ve heard of this phenomenon for many a decade. I do believe, tinnitus, hallucinations and schizophrenia aside, it it is has been genuine in a small number of cases.
My understanding, perhaps insights, comes from one being fascinated crystal radios and electronics. A crystal radio is a received constructed of little more than a long wire outside, a single-layer coil of wire, a tuning capacitor, (often) a 1N64 germanium diode, a crystal headphone (anyone remember those??), powered by received AM signal. They are easy to build, and thanks to many of the 10–50,000 watt AM transmitters (such as KFI, Los Angeles), easy to find a wonder-accommodating station.
So, I can easily imagine the human body and mouth, under the right conditions and hardware could accidentally create the necessary tuning circuit. But what of the diode? Between vacuum tube diodes and germanium were once copper oxide junctions diodes. (Are engineers every so happy their gone!) Doesn’t brass contain copper, too? So, perhaps some microscopic metal oxide junction accidentally came to be created. And what about an earphone? Teeth enamel, like the crystal in the earphone, is an excellent dielectric. Voila! (perhaps) an in-the-mouth radio. Not your boom box variety, but micro-wattage powered, yet enough to catch the present music’s beat.
I vote for plausibility.
I read about crystal radios when I was a kid, people using a lump of coal, with no amplifier, as a crystal, etc. But they always had an earphone. What possible biological construct could remotely resemble a speaker? And don’t say the eardrum – the people with the crystal radio sets have both – an earpiece and their own ears.
Your teeth and skull. That much is a known factor.
It’s a known fact that teeth produce sound in response to a voltage?!
What you’re all forgetting, is the gigantic length of wire you need to even get a squeak out of a crystal radio. No coil, no aerial. Capacitor and very poor diode MIGHT be possible in the junction between metals in a filling. A soaking wet, constantly changing capacitor and diode, mind.
I’d be more likely to blame it on ghosts.
A radio station in Cincinnati, WLW founded by Powell Crosley, and experimented with by him, was allowed in the mid 1930’s to broadcast at 500,000 watts of power, and was known as the ‘Nations Station’.
This station was heard throughtout the US and in many foreign countries, Europe, Arfica and so on. The tower for this station was located in Mason, Ohio and when it broadcast at full power (which used to be occasional) farmers in that area reported that they could hear the radio programs in fence wire, drain pipes and IN THEIR TEETH BRACES. Never happened to me persaonally, but is reported to have occured frequently.
In the 1940s the FCC reduced their broadcasting power to 50,000 watts, which it is today. Also in the 1940s, 50s and into the 60s this same site and equipment and faciltiy was used as the Voice of America, (VOA).
I seem to recall the Mythbusters doing an episode about this (specifically regarding Lucille Ball’s claim). They weren’t able to reproduce the effect, however.
Marc
It happened to Laurie Partridge; why couldn’t it happen to you?