mobile phones

pcwares

Can an incoming call create enough of a reaction to ignite fumes from a petrol pump?

If so what distance?

PcWares

TerrorFirmer

To be brief, it is near impossible; but there is of course that one in a million possibility, hence the warning signs

center15

No they did this on mythbusters tv show ,they soaked a caravan in petrol and put about 20 mobiles phones in and rung them and nothing happened

Johnny_the_fox

no.

mythbusters on the discovery channel proved it couldnt happen.

legologic

As did brainiac on sky one... but yeah enough about that!

It's all about the Mythbusters!

dudara

center15 wrote:

No they did this on mythbusters tv show ,they soaked a caravan in petrol and put about 20 mobiles phones in and rung them and nothing happened

What if the 21st phone was the one capable of igniting the spark?

Mythbusters annoys the hell out of me for it's haphazard approach at times

zuutroy

dudara wrote:

What if the 21st phone was the one capable of igniting the spark?

Mythbusters annoys the hell out of me for it's haphazard approach at times

You what? Never have I seen a program even remotely close to them in terms of attention to detail in recreating circumstances. I think they're brilliant experimentalists. What exactly are you basing that on?

Son Goku

pcwares wrote:

Can an incoming call create enough of a reaction to ignite fumes from a petrol pump?

If so what distance?

PcWares

Even if a mobile was sitting on top of pure kerosene, the kerosene is more likely to burst into flames due to the fact that you can see it.

themole

the idea of a mobile causing a fire has to do with the phone signal being picked up by metal in the area.

have you ever heard the noise on a set of speakers caused by your phone? thats your phone signal being picked up by the speakers and it strong enough to cause the speaker to make a sound

the metal can become charged if insulated from the ground. Then if it is close enough to another piece of metal that is grounded then a spark can fly from the charged one to the grounded one.



thats a lot of if's though.

the brainiac test was incorrectly done as they had a caravan which is mostly wood, in contrast to petrol stations which are mostly metal.

also in petrol stations the mostlikely source of combustion is the spark igniting gas in the surrounding are.

i didn't see the mythbusters one though. so maybe that was done better.


the long and short of it is that the possibility of a fire is based on a certain particular set of circumstances occurring. you would not be likely to rule out this by doing experiments.

all they proved was that it didn't happen in their case and they also showed a lack of knowledge understanding what the actual risk was

OMcGovern

That MythBusters episode explored the much more plausible explanation of those garage fires. That the driver is highly charged with static electricity, gets out, starts the fuel pump ( which can be set to automatic to continue ), while the driver gets back in the car. Somehow, they become charged with static electricity... they return to the pump, and cause a spark on contact with the fuel pump. They analysed the CC TV footage of several fires, and most drivers
had got back into the car while the pump was still going.

I've got some fair auld jolts of static electricity whenever I wear a certain fleece jumper of mine... enough to be somewhat wary of touching my DVD recorder anymore ! I can see how electro-shock therapy could induce a fear of a certain behaviour after getting enough shocks to actually cause the DVD recorder to crash/require a reboot.

regards,
Owen

dudara

zuutroy wrote:

You what? Never have I seen a program even remotely close to them in terms of attention to detail in recreating circumstances. I think they're brilliant experimentalists. What exactly are you basing that on?

The fact that I have a PhD in experimental physics.

They investigate interesting things, but their experiments are tabloid.

themole wrote:

all they proved was that it didn't happen in their case and they also showed a lack of knowledge understanding what the actual risk was

I agree

legologic

In fairness... It's a light-entertainment show involving two special-effects engineers, that's all. If they were to be any more pedantic about the physics of the experiments they'd loose the audience. It's an american TV audience, they're not so big on universal constants and big bangs, more Universal studios and big explosions.

themole

true.

and it is a good show.

people just need to know not to take it too seriously

Michael Collins

pcwares wrote:

Can an incoming call create enough of a reaction to ignite fumes from a petrol pump?

If so what distance?

PcWares

It'd be more likely in an outgoing call as the phone has to transmit a lot of power to reach the base station whereas the base station power by the time it reaches the phone is smaller. (although of course an incoming call causes the phone to talk to the base station when it's answered)