Paolo, This sounds like something worthy of investigation.
My guess would be the effect of the wet concrete grounding the highly capacitive human body, effectively eliminating the bottom half of the dipole (The built in antenna is the top half). Of course, this probably only happens in marginal signal areas, as I've many times seen cell phones used in and around pools. Some time back I did some informal experiments with hand-held transceivers and portable receivers of various types. Some radios worked better with an earth ground wire attached to the chassis, and some worked worse. In some cases touching an earthed piece of metal with the free hand was enough to cause dramatic change in signal quality. Scott Lacey -----Original Message----- From: owner-emc-p...@ieee.org [mailto:owner-emc-p...@ieee.org]On Behalf Of Roncone Paolo Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 6:19 PM To: 'emc-p...@ieee.org ' Subject: Cell phones and humans Group, the subject of possible biological effects of cell phones is having a lot of attention these days and it was already touched in this forum. I'd like to get opinions about what my wife just told me. I don't know if this should be classified as "influence of cell phones on humans" or "influence of humans on cell phones". The story is as follows: my wife was talking on her cell phone while walking by a swimming pool. As she steppen right on the wet border of the pool (she was bare foot) the line went down. But just after stepping back on dry ground (just a step or two back, so the signal level shouldn't have changed so much) the line got back and she was able to resume her conversation. She told me she didn't step back again on the water, just to check if the phenomenon was repeatable. I honestly don't know if this is even worth of attention because of course it's not a "laboratory" or just even a "controlled" experiment. But if anyone out there has any guess or thinks there is an explanation... that would be welcome !! Paolo ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson: pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com Michael Garretson: pstc_ad...@garretson.org For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org
