No, this isn't about how cellular handsets fry your brain - and I still don't think they do. But a couple of interesting stories making the rounds illustrate other potential hazards of hitting the road - one regarding electromagnetic wave propagation 101, and the other, well, a related problem from the thermodynamics domain. But, seriously, I think a few engineers need to find a new line of work.
I keep waiting for the World Health Organization to produce, finally, the smoking gun that clearly links cellular handset use with brain tumors. This has been hinted at in the press for some time, but, like most stories along these lines, I don’t expect anything meaningful to come of it. Such doesn’t mean, however, that mobility is entirely without electromagnetic hazards – in fact, the opposite is true, as is illustrated by two recent stories in the news.
The first of these comes out of Las Vegas, one of my favorite travel destinations, and concerns the Vdara Hotel, part of the massive and very expensive City Center development that recently opened. It seems that Vdara’s architects may have cut class during the part about how curved glass surfaces act like a lens and thus can focus powerful electromagnetic beams, in this case from the sun, on specific locations depending, of course, on time of day and the day of the year. Nonetheless, cool science from the other class they may have skipped, geometry, can be used to predict exactly how this will happen. So I was surprised to see this story (among others) about how some people near the pool at the Vdara are getting more than a tan from the sun – some have reported getting singed, in fact, along with melted plastic bags. This isn’t quite to the level of a solar energy plant, but it’s pretty significant nonetheless. Since one of my favorite leisure activities when visiting Las Vegas is to sit by the pool with a stack of Business Weeks (um, I mean, Network Worlds!), I think I’ll skip Vdara until they remedy this problem – and, yes, they’re working on it. Good luck with that one, and next time see if you can find an engineer who actually understands electromagnetic wave propagation before dropping a few billion on an unintended solar cooker.
As an aside, a similar problem can occur with fixed LASER or LED infrared point-to-point links – if the geometry isn’t carefully worked out in advance, a given link can be disabled for a few minutes per day and a few days per year when the sun, a great infrared source if there ever was one, shines directly into the transmitter or receiver. A little modeling here goes a long way.
The other case involves burn-like skin darkening (apparently known as “toasted skin syndrome”; I’d never heard that term before…) which some are receiving from laptop computers placed on, duh, one’s lap. This one seems so obvious that it shouldn’t be a problem (as in, if it hurts when you do that, don’t do that), but the vendors of notebooks and similar devices probably should be doing a better job of insulating the bottom of the case or otherwise dissipating the large amount of heat that can radiate from even low-voltage processors operating at high clock rates. I think advances in basic semiconductor process technology will, over time, provide more internal grease for all those electrons (and they better, as we approach, no kidding, 300+ GHz. clock rates), but, in the interim, this one, while obviously harmful, at least won’t roast you alive.
