Since I neither want to annoy nor impress strangers with a cutesy cellphone chime, I keep my phone on ‘vibrate’ mode. (I especially don’t want to be like a typical Taiwanese woman who leaves her phone buried in the oblivion of her purse such that after 5 minutes of louder and louder ringing, she still hasn’t found her phone.)
Anyway, I’m a little surprised at the strength of the magnetic field produced by this vibrating phone:
I use a small, travel mouse on my notebook computer. A few times now, my cellphone has rung, and although about 40 cm away, it has induced a field in my mouse wire strong enough to pull the mouse toward the phone.
This field is also strong enough to shunt my MP3 player into shutting off (crashing), possibly by reversing electron flow in the circuitry. In this case, the phone is also about 40 cm away.
In this age of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic bracelets and airspace saturated with electromagnetic radiation, maybe this is no big deal; but doesn’t this “cellphone magnetism” seem relatively powerful and harmful? Will a tumor grow from my body in the shape of ZhongHua telecom’s logo? :shock: