Are you an electician, or have some sort of electronic engineering
certification? Your explaination was absolutely, in one word, incredible!
You definitely seem to know your stuff, which is commendable! I invy you
for that. I'd love to have that much knowledge!
Chris.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin G. McCormick" <[email protected]>
To: "Techno-Chat ... Technology Enthusiasm!" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: Remembering a Big Solar Flare March 8, 1989
The stories about radio stations being received on
heaters, electric kettles and tooth crowns are not crazy at all
but they are weird all right.
Here is a very brief simple explanation. Electricity
produces magnetism every time it passes through anything
conductive. It could be electric wire, water with salt water
being the best, you name it. If it conducts, some magnetism
results.
Ther are also substances like certain ceramics, bones,
teeth and minerals that are said to be piezoelectric which means
they produce electricity when force is applied to them and they
also bend or twist ever so slightly when electric current is
applied.
So, what does this have to do with anything we are
talking about?
Well, everything but you have to think outside the box.
While telephones, music players and electronic devices
have speakers and buzzers meant to be heard, Your heater or
kettle wasn't ever made to be heard but some of the same
activity that makes a speaker speak goes on accidentally in just
about anything electrical or electronic. How many machines do
you have that make some noise as they work but that's not their
primary function?
The hot wires in an electric heater or cooking appliance are not
too different in some ways than the very fine wire in a coil
that is called the voice coil in loud speakers and headphones.
The voice coil produces magnetism which adds to and subtracts
from a permanent magnet and pushes and pulls a thin diaphragm of
paper or plastic that turns the vibrations in to sound.
In the electric heater or kettle, those wires produce strong
magnetic fields that cause the very wire itself to vibrate
causing a slight humming sound in some devices and occasionally
a fairly loud buzz or hum.
Radio signals from strong nearby AM stations can make it
on to the power mains or lines leading to your house and, if
strong enough, could generate magnetic fields and vibrations
just like a voice coil in a speaker though not well.
Also, some heaters contain a device called a rectifier
or diode that turns alternating current in to direct current for
various technical reasons. This would make it even easier to
hear music on your heater. See the next paragraph.
As for tooth fillings and crowns, etc, we actually have all the
ingredients for a radio in our bodies but fortunately, they
don't work all that well for most of us most of the time.
Teeth and bones are capable of turning electric currents
in to vibrations. The saliva in some people's mouths is acidic
and that combination can rectify the signal of a radio station
like an old-fashioned crystal radio. If you live close enough to
the broadcast antenna, the audio of the radio signal will be
decoded and vibrate your teeth and skull, making you hear sound.
Several years ago, there was a news report about a
veteran of the Vietnam War who had bullet fragments in his skull
and complained of hearing a local radio station. It was
absolutely proved he was telling the truth when another person
could also hear it by pressing his ear to the man's head.
There is a high-powered AM radio station in South
Oklahoma City and people who live near the antenna can hear it
on lots of odd objects such as a cooking pan with a fork lying
tines-down with a bit of water in the bottom of the pan.
Hearing radio stations where you shouldn't be hearing them
doesn't happen every day, but I hope I haven't bored too many of
you as to what is happening. It has never happened to me as far
as tooth fillings but I have certainly heard my share of
radio stations on amplifiers that weren't properly filtered.
Martin
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