I’m often disappointed by technology. The year is 2007 and there are no cyborgs, no anti-gravity devices, no colonization of the Moon, no food pills and no household robots worth mentioning. But one thing does give me hope for the future: technologies involving induction! This has to be the coolest thing ever.

Induction itself is quite simple: it’s a law that describes the connection between the strength of a magnetic field, a conductor (such as a piece of metal), the conductor’s movement speed, and the resulting voltage in the conductor. Essentially, voltage and magnetic fields are connected…and one can be used to generate the other. I assume that everyone’s familiar with the electromagnet and how electricity can generate a magnetic field, but the cool thing about induction is that the reverse is also possible.

One application that’s come up recently is recharging batteries through induction; it’s been all over the news lately, how (induction-prepared) cell phone batteries can be recharged by simply placing the phone on a special pad, and it’s been rumored that Apple will use induction for certain products. And here’s a Taiwanese patent for a device that can recharge normal batteries through induction. But there’s more to induction than this!

One thing I had never heard about until today was induction cooking. It’s really quite clever: a magnetic field interacts with a conductor (a cooking pan or somesuch), and because there’s electrical resistance in the conductor the current is converted to heat. No need to transfer the heat through a coil or by heating with gas – the cooking pan itself is heated from the magnetic field! Cleaner, faster, and more efficient. Also less dangerous, since you won’t be able to burn your hand on the stove anymore. Is there no downside to this at all?! No, not really. But try telling that to the uncouth masses.

“A great big magnetic field in my kitchen?! No way! Who knows what it’ll do to me!”

It’ll make your life better, that’s what. Here’s a summary of test results concerning the dangers of radiation involved with inductive cooking. See anything there along the lines of “will cause dangerous mutations and spleen ruptures”? Nope, nothing at all. (Though to be honest, cancer is always a possibility. But then, just about everything can cause cancer.)

I think most people suffer from a belief that electromagnetic radiation is something strange and weird and sciency. It’s not. It’s pretty dull and common, in fact. I leave you with a quote from Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics’ review of The Core:

[...] humanity is doomed and will end in a few months. The cause? Deadly microwave radiation will cook us since we’ll no longer be shielded by the Earth’s magnetic force field or what Keyes refers to as “Earth’s electro-magnetic energy field”.

Keyes proceeds to demonstrate the effects of losing the magnetic field by lighting the aerosol from a can of hair spray and flaming a peach representing Earth. He makes his explanation simplistic since he’s talking to military brass who can’t grasp complexity, even though they lead one of the most complex and high tech organizations in the world.

Not only does Keyes not know the difference between forces and energy but he apparently believes that electromagnetic radiation such as microwaves can be deflected by a magnetic field. Here’s a quick experiment, try using a magnet to deflect the electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by a flashlight. The EM radiation is a beam of visible light and, although we hate to spoil the experiment, nothing will happen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Awesome Stuff, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.