Mobile phones safe in gas stations: Don't spark explosions?
By Tony Dennis: Friday 26 December 2003, 10:33
A BRITISH tongue-in-cheek technology TV programme, Brainiacs, has found no evidence that mobile phones can spark an explosion.
Gas stations [surely petrol stations Tone? Ed.] have long been displaying warning signs that handsets shouldn't be used while filling up a gas tank.
The reasoning behind these warnings appears to be videotape evidence of one gas station accident that had pointed to a customer using a handset at the time.
So, to test the theory, Sky One's Brainiacs team filled an old caravan with petrol and petrol fumes then placed six mobile phones inside it.
Calling all the handsets had no ill effects whatsoever.
By contrast, when the Brainiacs team then connected a man dressed in nylon clothes to a copper wire (the other end of which was inside the caravan), the static electricity discharge he generated was sufficient to cause the caravan to explode.
One wonders how the team will set about to prove that using mobile phones on aircraft has no ill effects either? "
By Tony Dennis: Friday 26 December 2003, 10:33
A BRITISH tongue-in-cheek technology TV programme, Brainiacs, has found no evidence that mobile phones can spark an explosion.
Gas stations [surely petrol stations Tone? Ed.] have long been displaying warning signs that handsets shouldn't be used while filling up a gas tank.
The reasoning behind these warnings appears to be videotape evidence of one gas station accident that had pointed to a customer using a handset at the time.
So, to test the theory, Sky One's Brainiacs team filled an old caravan with petrol and petrol fumes then placed six mobile phones inside it.
Calling all the handsets had no ill effects whatsoever.
By contrast, when the Brainiacs team then connected a man dressed in nylon clothes to a copper wire (the other end of which was inside the caravan), the static electricity discharge he generated was sufficient to cause the caravan to explode.
One wonders how the team will set about to prove that using mobile phones on aircraft has no ill effects either? "
Comments
Cell phones = explosion))). Don't confuse me!