Science & Technology

Plants won't grow near a Wi-Fi router

By T.K. Randall
May 28, 2013 ·  52 comments

Image Credit: sxc.hu The ninth-graders got the idea for the research after noticing that they had difficulty concentrating during the day if they slept with a mobile phone near their head the night before. While their goal was to test the effect of cellphone radiation on humans, a lack of appropriate equipment meant that they had to settle for testing the effect on plants instead.

Several trays of cress seeds were left in two rooms, one of which being exposed to mobile phone radiation. After twelve days the results were particularly damning - the trays in the regular room had grown without any problems while the trays in the room exposed to radiation had failed to grow at all. The results won the girls a regional science prize and now scientists are looking to replicate the experiment under controlled laboratory conditions to find out if cellphone radiation is really as harmful as their experiment seems to suggest.[!gad]The ninth-graders got the idea for the research after noticing that they had difficulty concentrating during the day if they slept with a mobile phone near their head the night before. While their goal was to test the effect of cellphone radiation on humans, a lack of appropriate equipment meant that they had to settle for testing the effect on plants instead.

Several trays of cress seeds were left in two rooms, one of which being exposed to mobile phone radiation. After twelve days the results were particularly damning - the trays in the regular room had grown without any problems while the trays in the room exposed to radiation had failed to grow at all. The results won the girls a regional science prize and now scientists are looking to replicate the experiment under controlled laboratory conditions to find out if cellphone radiation is really as harmful as their experiment seems to suggest.

Source: MNN.com | Comments (52)

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