HOWTO, Cook an Egg With Your Cell Phone 337
xPosiMattx writes "Suzzanna Decantworthy published an article in her Wymsey Weekend column that described how to cook an egg with two cell phones. From the article: "Many students, and other young people, have little in the way of cooking skills but can usually get their hands on a couple of mobile phones. So, this week, we show you how to use two mobile phones to cook an egg which will make a change from phoning out for a pizza.""
A cheaper way (Score:3, Funny)
2. Oil and flour a 8" pan (or use nonstick).
3. Dial your ex.
4. Place phone in pan.
5. Crack an egg on the phone.
6. Season to taste.
7. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
OK, obviously #3 is a problem...
Re:A cheaper way (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A cheaper way (Score:5, Funny)
5. Crack an egg on the phone.
#5 might be closer to a solution than you guess.
I, like others, RTFA, and along with everyone else who'd like their 30 seconds of "WTF" back, here's a way that might actually work.
1) Remove batteries from phones. ...but it's within the right order of magnitude [mpoweruk.com] to cook an egg, particularly because the low internal resistance of such batteries allows for very high current.
2) You've got between 1 and 2 amp-hours of 12 volts to work with.
3) You need to get the yolk to around 63C for soft-boiling, and from 20C room temperature, that'll take you around 15-20kJ of energy. Yeah, I've skipped a bit [ex.ac.uk].
4)
Crack one egg onto one phone - you'll cook something as you short the entire battery out through a pile of egg. If you used the battery as a swizzle stick, constantly stirring the egg mess, and constantly scraping the battery terminals free of solidified gunk, you'll generate a decent amount of heat in the gunk. (You'll also probably electrolyze some of the stuff in the egg, so I wouldn't recommend trying this at home - FSM-only-knows what kind of stuff will show up at the battery terminals beyond hydrogen and oxygen.)
At worst, you'll end up with a partially-toxic, soupy, warmed-over mess with a few chunks of scrambled egg in it.
6) If you've got enough surplus energy (like, say, 100kJ to work with), break up the battery packs, use them to power a small hot plate or peltier unit, (preferably with 12V, but if you've got even more surplus energy in the battery packs to waste on conversions, you could use a converter to turn 12VDC into 120VAC), and power your heater with that.
Crack the egg onto the hot plate, and you'll end up with a light fluffy omelette.
Either way, you're way ahead of the author of the original link.
Re:A cheaper way (Score:2)
Re:A cheaper way (Score:5, Funny)
You mean a McGriddle?
Re:A cheaper way (Score:3, Funny)
*ducks*
It May Just Be Me... (Score:5, Funny)
Not so fast there. (Score:5, Insightful)
6. Phone A will now be talking to Phone B whilst Phone B will be talking to Phone A.
I love urban legend as much as the next guy, but this isn't exactly true. These are cell phones not two-way radios. Phone A will be talking to a cell phone tower, whilst phone B is talking to a cell phone tower, whilst each cell phone tower is talking to the two phones respectively. There is no reason to think that you are forming some sort of ultra powerful death beam between the two phones by placing them in close proximity to one another. Having said that, if I was being attacked by a giant stay puff marshmallow man, I might give this a shot as a last resort.
Peak power (Score:3, Insightful)
Easyish to achieve (Score:4, Interesting)
However this is obviously BS. Especially as phones all talk to the tower, so using two of them serves no other purpose than halfing the cook time.
This is your brain on CDMA
Re:Easyish to achieve (Score:2)
from both phones interfering with each other?
(where the waves clash)
no. (Score:2)
Re:Easyish to achieve (Score:2)
I might try this once I slip into free evening minutes...
Re:Easyish to achieve (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peak power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:2, Informative)
Not so fast, yourself!
This might be an urban legend, but I sure hop
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course the cell phone thing is ridiculous. Even IF you could get two modern (i.e. microwave-band) phones to operate at the full 2W continuously, you're a far cry from the hundreds of watts a microwave oven needs to cook the same eggs -- and a microwave oven has a resonation chamber to bounce the waves around until they're absorbed by the food. I suppose if you irradiated an egg using cell phones and could build a metal chamber to resonate those waves and contain them until absorption, you could eventually cook an egg. It would take a long time though, and for what it will cost you in either cell bills or fried phones you could have just bought a damn Egg McMuffin!
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, a lot of people think that two cell phones form a link together. But I can top that one:
My girlfriend's (believe it or not) mom has been going on a "kill the long-distance bill" rampage, and has been yelling at everyone for using her land line to make anything but local phone calls. One day, I asked her why she doesn't use her cell phone to call her mom who lives in New Mexico (my girlfriend's mom lives in Wisconsin). She replied "Oh, well there aren't that many cell phone towers in New Mexico."
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:2)
Most likely, it sends a low-bandwidth "no transmission" during times of no talking, and is probably somewhere around the output power of "standby" mode. No reason to saturate the digital airwaves with 00000000 when there's no sound.
The radio in the background simply makes sure both phones are ac
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:3, Informative)
Erm, not true. Analog phone are Frequency Modulated, power output is, for all intents and purposes, constant during transmit. The purpose of the radio is to ensure that both phones are transmitting continuously: a digital phone transmitting "silence" will have a much lower signal to noise ratio,
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:5, Insightful)
As to believers of the original article, eggs average around 50 grams in weight. It takes one calorie to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree Celsius. One calorie = 4.184 Joules (let's say 4.2 because this is a rough approximation anyway). Room temperature is 20 Celsius, so the difference to boiling is 80 degrees C. You need 4000 calories to bring an egg up to boiling (50 gms * 80 degrees C), or about 17000 Joules. Since a joule is equal to a watt-second, that means your average phone with 1 watt output would need about 4.5 hours to raise the egg to boiling temperature, assuming NO other losses.
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:4, Informative)
I will give you that the first part of A is probably true.
However, the volume of an egg is at least half water, probably more like the human body around 80% or more. Remember it turns into a chicken which, like nearly all creatures on the Earth, are mobile sacks of water.
> That brings the time down to 20 minutes - which is what the article says.
FTA:
"For instance, a pair of mobiles each with 2 Watts of transmitter output will take three minutes to boil a large free range egg"
Where did you get 20 minutes from?
It takes 3 minutes to hard boil an egg in water. There's no way your cell phone (or even a few of them) could put enough heat into an egg to make it's temperature go up even a couple degrees. You need to be able to put more heat into the object than the air around it can dissipate.
Re:Not so fast there. (Score:4, Interesting)
From thin air? I really don't know. Somehow that's what I remembered.
And you are right about the water level of an egg, looking at the Nutrition Facts I count 11g of other stuff in a 50g egg, AKA 39g of water AKA 78%.
I now acknowledge that this is a hoax. There really is no way for a cell phone to cook an egg in 3 minutes.
What's the radio for?? (Score:2)
What's the radio for??
fp
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:2)
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:2)
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:3, Informative)
What's the radio for??
To generate traffic. On modern digital cell phones, if the line is silent, they don't transmit or recieve, or at least not enough to speak of. Saves on power.
The radio will generate traffic and cause the power output of the phone to max out.
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's the radio for?? (Score:4, Funny)
That SO wouldn't work... (Score:5, Funny)
can't cook an egg with two cell phones. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:can't cook an egg with two cell phones. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:can't cook an egg with two cell phones. (Score:4, Funny)
It's even more if the radio rolls all 20s.
Re:can't cook an egg with two cell phones. (Score:2)
That doesn't mean that radio signals aren't generated that could pass through and possibly cook the egg. Radio signals don't work like laser beams.
Re:can't cook an egg with two cell phones. (Score:2)
Note to self... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Note to self... (Score:2, Funny)
Dupe (Score:3, Informative)
Brainiac (Score:5, Informative)
Brainiac is the worst program ever (Score:5, Funny)
It has none of the charm or actual science of Mythbusters and yet the people who make it think they're the coolest, funniest, sexiest people in the world. What they don't realise is that they're actually English.
Re:Brainiac is the worst program ever (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you have a lot of crap on TV over there (actually pretty much exclusively crap), now you have our crap too.
It may have escaped your attention that the terms "American" and "humour" are mutually exclusive. We're better than you, get over it ;)
Power levels and direction (Score:2)
On top of that it's an omnidirectional signal. As some others pointed out, you're talking to the tower, not directly to the other phone, but even that suggests that it's somehow directional. So in the end, the amount of power were talking
Re:Power levels and direction (Score:2)
you're talking to the tower, not directly to the other phone
It's amazing that such a tiny little transmitter as the one in my phone can transmit a signal strong enough to reach someone in the same room, never mind a tower miles away from my location.
Re:Power levels and direction (Score:2)
Re:Power levels and direction (Score:2)
Important lesson (Score:2)
Next up we learn how to get a heated pizza with two cellphones. Simply call pizza places until you find one willing to trade a pizza for one of your cellphones and baddbingbaddaboom, you get your hot pizza.
Oh dear lord (Score:2)
At least, I dunno, learn about the laws of physics? Specifically, THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.
That is all.
I don't believe a word of it (Score:2)
A few problems (Score:5, Informative)
Problem #2. Even if you scrounged up some old bagphones with their 3W output power, they still only gives you six watts of power. I don't think that is going to cook an egg in the time claimed.
Makes you wonder (Score:2)
Fried brain coming right up!
Remember, kids... (Score:5, Funny)
This will never work (Score:5, Informative)
1) Cell phones are the wrong frequency. They are 800, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz depending on the service. To make water heat up, you need to be at the frequency water resonates which is 2.4GHz.
2) Cell phones are too low power. A microwave that will cook an egg in a couple of minutes is going to have power expressed in at least the hundreds of watts, and probably will be 1000 watt. Cellphones have output power expressed in the miliwatts, that 1/1000th of a watt. We are literally talking over 5 orders of magnitude difference.
3) Microwaves function because they build standing waves. You find that if you take the frequency of a microwave (printed on the back usually), measure the size of the cavity and run the numbers, it works out that it's of a size such that standing waves build up. Taking a magnetron out of the case makes it work very poorly, despite the power output.
4) Cellphones operate in bursts. They do a burst when they have something to transmit, then fall silent. Saves on batteries. That's not going to cut it for heating, you need continous output.
I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but you'll never get something like this to work. To even have a chance, you'd need to use a cordless 2.4GHz phone. It's at least in the right frequency ballpark, never mind all the other problems.
Does work for me... (Score:2)
Exactly. And this is why I always cook my eggs between my notebok and my wireless AP while transferring large files, instead of falling for this urban legend spread by mobile phone companies trying to boost their revenues.
Re:This will never work (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's 1/9th of the peak resonant frequency [wikipedia.org]. I only mention this because I recently stumbled upon it :)
Re:This will never work (Score:2)
That's not actually correct- there's basically an absorption band and it is quite wide (10s of gigahertz) in fact; other frequencies off the peak of the absorption band don't work quite as efficiently, but certainly they do work.
Too much effort to debunk. (Score:2)
Re:This will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does this myth persist? I have no idea. Whenever it pops up, someone points out that it's not true. But it still persists. It doesn't even make sense, after all - microwaves heat dry things (like... plates) as well as wet things.
Microwaves work via dielectric heating [wikipedia.org], which is just the vibration of any electric dipole due to any electromagnetic radiation. Radiation in the gigahertz band is typical, but it's a wide band. Microwave ovens use 2450 MHz because it's in the ISM band.
Water does heat best, but that's because it's one of the strongest dipoles known to exist.
Water vapor has a resonant frequency at 22.235 GHz [brucegary.net] and 183 GHz. You can see the 22 GHz line in the graph on the linked page. Also of interest is the fact that clouds don't have that absorption feature because liquid water droplets are small compared to microwave wavelengths.
Note that if water's resonant frequency was 2450 MHz, absolutely no one would use that band, as you couldn't transmit anything on it, because water vapor in the air would be opaque to it.
a quick calculation (Score:3, Informative)
The article is still a joke, of course - the egg won't even come close to warming by any measurable amount.
That won't work (Score:2)
Jeezuz. Do you guys read and/or apply a 4 seconds of thought to these things before you post them?
Egg, brain, whatever... (Score:4, Funny)
Really Works! Call Now! (Score:5, Funny)
And, for the first time since yesterday, I am offering for sale a revolutionary new product that will protect your precious head from the same egg-cooking x-rays that make you breakfast.
For three small payments of $19.95, you can block the radiation emitting from your cell phone by adding this small device to the back of your phone. The unique lattice-like orientation of the pantented gold-copper-lead electrical conduits create an electrical "net" around your phone, forcing the dangerous radiation to be emitted directly up into the sky instead of into your brain! Simply peel the backing off the product and affix it to the back of your phone, between the phone and the battery. Be sure to read the manual for proper placement, because if you are even a fraction of an inch off, you won't get the proper protection you deserve. If you are feeling nervous about doing it yourself, I also offer a service to install this device on your phone for you, for only two additional payments of $19.95 each, plus postage. Just send me your phone and rest easy!
But wait! Call now, and I will throw in, completely free of charge, a cell phone privacy guard. This handy device fits over the mouthpiece of the phone and prevents malicious hackers from listening in on your calls by scrambling your signal. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
First one hundred callers receive a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge as a FREE GIFT!
Wow. Who knew? Cook an egg with 12 Watt-minutes (Score:5, Insightful)
60 joules to the watt-minute. 720 joules in 12 watt-minutes. 720 joules < 14,700 joules.
Check: it takes about 1 minute for my 700 watt microwave to cook 1 egg. 700 watt-minutes is 42,000 joules. 720 joules < 42,000 joules.
I call bullshit.
Re:Wow. Who knew? Cook an egg with 12 Watt-minutes (Score:2)
Re:Wow. Who knew? Cook an egg with 12 Watt-minutes (Score:2)
Oh yeah?! (Score:2)
;-)
Irresponsible (Score:5, Funny)
For the sake of humanity (Diggmanity?) *** --No Digg ***.
I better go warn them before it's too late.....
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
http://www.digg.com/technology/This_is_Your_Brain
2 watt output? (Score:2)
I'm thinking a cellphone with a two-watt output would sap a standard cell battery dry in just about that ... three minutes.
I thought most cell devices were on the order of 1/3 watt rf output.
Re:Not a hoax, but a parody. (Score:2)
Also not a workable egg cooking method (Score:2)
It's a HOAX! (Score:5, Informative)
Holy bejesus (Score:3, Informative)
It takes one calorie to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C. To a first approximation, an egg weighs about 50 grams, and is full of stuff whose specific heat is probably not too different from that of water. Let's say cooking an egg at room temperature requires you to raise its temperature by 50 degrees C for one minute. You will need something on the order of 2500 calories to do this, or about 10,000 joules. This energy will have to be transferred to the egg over a one-minute interval, assuming 100% efficiency.
A joule is one watt-second, so this cooking process is going to require exposing the egg to about 166 watts for one minute. At 100% efficiency.
A cell phone puts out about one watt, and good luck funnelling all of its output into an egg. (For extra credit, calculate the impedance of a chicken egg in free space, and design a suitable matching network).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my public-safety campaign, warning gullible Americans about dangerous levels of radiation in voting booths.
Snopes! (Score:3, Informative)
If this were true, a naked magentron would be a great cellphone jammer. Even if not, it still might be!
100 phones wont even cook an egg. (Score:2, Informative)
Shocking level of knowledge from slashdot readers (Score:3, Informative)
First off, as stated in an earlier port, 2.45GHz is NOT the resonant frequency of water molecules, otherwise only the surface of food in microwaves would be heated.
http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW/microwave_ovens. html [virginia.edu]
Cell phones work at 850MHz or 1850MHz, so it's not looking good right from the off.
Second off, as stated by the article, "For instance, a pair of mobiles each with 2 Watts of transmitter output will take three minutes to boil a large free range egg."
Four watts. Four joules per second.
Lets look at this. I'll use some glaring assumptions just to get an estimate of the time taken to cook an egg with 4W (with is a factor of ten greater than you'd really expect from two mobile phone).
First off, lets assume that you want to heat the egg (70g - it's a large egg) from 20C to 100C. I'm not sure if that constitutes cooking, but it'll do for now.
Lets also assume that the energy required to heat the egg is similar to that of water (4186 J/kg).
So energy required is 4186 * 0.07 * 80 = 23kJ.
At 4W, we're talking 5860 seconds, or 98 minutes. And that's assuming 100% efficiency, which definitely won't be the case in this situation. (Not forgetting the already incorrect factor of ten for the phone output power, frequency of operation and burst nature of phone comms).
By the by, I discovered this page on egg boiling science as I finished writing this post:
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/ [ex.ac.uk]
Perhaps someone with more patience than me can more accurately calculate the energy required to boil a 70g egg?
Next week's lesson will be (Score:2)
mod STORY down, just because it's not funny... (Score:2)
Is this a new low for slashdot ? Don't get me wrong, folks, I *LOVE* slashdot, been reading for freakin' ever, but Hemos... please... you can do better, and your readers deserve better, huh? Don't you think? Or ma
Okay, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What is this article doing here? (Score:2)
Sanity check (Score:2)
OK, let's do the math. How much energy does it take to boil an egg? Let's say a "large free range egg" weighs 100g. The egg proteins start coagulating at around 65 degrees celsius, i.e., about 40 degrees above room temperature. Heating up the egg by this much would take 100g*40deg = 4000 calories, by definition of calorie, assuming an egg has specific heat close to that of water (actually it's sli
A real way (Score:2)
But if you did have to cook an egg with two cell phones... something along these lines might work:
1. crack egg into pan
2. strip phones into pieces and gather plastic bits
3. liberally douse plastic bits with lighter fluid
4. ignight ligher fluid by using a bit of metal to short one of the cell phone batteries to cause a spark
5. hold pan over burning plastic
5. admire the cooked egg, then discard it and the rest of the toxic mess.
Disclaimer
Imagine... (Score:2)
I, for one, worship our egg-cooking cell phone overlords.
Imagine... (Score:2)
I, for one, worship our egg-cooking cell phone overlords.
SO we have given up the whole NEWS for NERDs theme (Score:2)
Why is this presented as real ?!?
My 9-year-old niece could tell you that isnt gonna work, especially in a few minutes.
Not sure why i hang out here anyway, 3/4 of this is in my paper usually the same day. Is that better than most locals?
It really works! (Score:3, Funny)
I tried it and it works!
The only thing the article fails to mention is that the phones must be inside a 400 degree oven for the entire process. But other than that...
Common sense and a little math (Score:3, Informative)
So, obviously this is BS.
Now. A big egg, let's say that's about 80 grams of mass, and that the specific heat of the combined egg contents is similar to water (shouldn't be too much of a long shot). So, we have 80 grams of something that has a specific heat close to 4 joules/(gram*kelvin).
To boil that, we need to heat it about 80 kelvin (room temperature around 293 kelvin, water boiling at 373 kelvin). That's 4 [joules/(gram*kelvin)] * 80 [kelvin] = 320 [joules/gram].
We had 80 grams of egg. This gives us 80 [grams] * 320 [joules/gram] = 25600 [joules].
We had five minutes to do this - that's 5*60=300 seconds. A joule being one watt in one second, we get: 25600 [watt*second] / 300 [seconds] = 85 [watts]. So, using 85 watts for five minutes should get an egg from room temperature to the boiling point of water. Approximately.
Each phone would then have to emit around 42 watts (could this be a coincidence? Oh, nevermind..).
Let's say you get around one third of the energy into the egg (I'm really being generous here - the egg would have to cover 1/3 of the output of the antenna and completely absorb the energy) - you would need two phones each with a 126 watt transmitter.
Mobile phones with 100+ watt transmitters? I know there are rural areas in the US of A, but I sincerely doubt that it's common to carry phones that pack that much punch.
Besides, the article talked about 2 watt output phones... Again, BS.
Ahhh.... Have a nice day.
Re:would we be able to (Score:2)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Two, if you keep your phone in your front pants pocket.
Re:I'm suspicious of this (Score:2)
I hate to tell you, but walkie-talkie mode still uses the tower. It just makes your cell phone behave like a walkie-talkie.
Re:I'm suspicious of this (Score:2)
Considering that radio signals generated by a cell phone aren't directional, I would say the geometry is a *lot* less complicated. Simple proximity should be fine (if in fact this works, which I doubt...). Pointing the tips of the two phones at the egg would be the best since the signal will radiate out from the antennae.
Also, depending on your
Re:If it were true , you'd friggin burn your face (Score:2)
Re:Article is ancient and probably spurious. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Article is ancient and probably spurious. (Score:2, Informative)
All 'ionizing radiation means' is that the radiation is strong enough to break the strong bonds between atoms causing the subject of the radiation to become ionized. Basically if the energy of a photon is high enough (the higher the frequency, the higher the energy), an electron can be kicked out of whatever material it strikes, or so I understand.
Normally, when a lower energy, non-ionizing photon strikes some object, it elevates the ener
Re:cell phones and microwaves (Score:2)
You need to find a new professor.
Re:cell phones and microwaves (Score:2)
Interestingly, this is a bunch of crap. GSM frequencies are GSM-900 (890 - 915 MHz up, 935 - 960 MHz down), GSM-1800 (1710 - 1785 MHz up, 1805 - 1880 MHz down), GSM-850 (824 - 849 MHz up, 869 - 894 MHz down), GSM-1900 (1850 - 1910 MHz up, 1930 - 1990 MHz down) and GSM-400 (450.4 - 457.6 MHz paired with 460.4 - 467.6 MHz, or 478.8 - 486 MHz paired w