Is Wifi Dangerious? Science Project Finds Plants Won't Grow Near Wi-Fi Router Five ninth-grade young women from Denmark recently created a science experiment that is causing a stir in the scientific community. It started with an observation and a question. The girls noticed that if they slept with their mobile phones near their heads at night, they often had difficulty concentrating at school the next day. They wanted to test the effect of a cellphone's radiation on humans, but their school, Hjallerup School in Denmark, did not have the equipment to handle such an experiment. So the girls designed an experiment that would test the effect of cellphone radiation on a plant instead. The students placed six trays filled with Lepidium sativum, a type of garden cress into a room without radiation, and six trays of the seeds into another room next to two routers that according to the girls calculations, emitted about the same type of radiation as an ordinary cellphone. Over the next 12 days, the girls observed, measured, weighed and photographed their results. Although by the end of the experiment the results were blatantly obvious — the cress seeds placed near the router had not grown. Many of them were completely dead. While the cress seeds planted in the other room, away from the routers, thrived. The experiment earned the girls (pictured below) top honors in a regional science competition and the interest of scientists around the world. According to Kim Horsevad, a teacher at Hjallerup Skole in Denmark were the cress experiment took place, a neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is interested in repeating the experiment in controlled professional scientific environments.
Someone should tell my houseplants that. Interesting non the less but i'll wait for it to be verified before panicking. It's hard to think of what mechanism would prevent growth.
Interesting. I may have to try running this experiment myself. Still, great work by the danish ninth-graders and a nice achievement in sparking the interest of the scientific community at large. Hopefully this may help inspire more youngsters to get into the sciences.
That's why I've lined all my sleepwear with tinfoil. Seriously, it's good work, and should provide for some interesting follow up work.
I wonder if other conditions in the two rooms (humidity, temperature and light etc.) were kept exactly the same. I assume so, but there could still be an unknown factor that was missed. A follow-up experiment could put trays in the same room but at increasing distances from the router. Maybe we should replicate this one. For science!
You've probably hit on a few conditions the girls have omitted to control during their experiments. But that doesn't really matter, whatever gets the kids doing something science/tech based is a good thing.
Absolutely. Even if they made some mistakes (although I'm quite sure that they have considered control conditions carefully), they'll learn from going back to it and replicating the study. Either way it's cheesecake all the way.
Very cool if not a little scary! Was thinking the same as you guys about the two rooms but I'm sure the girls or the teacher would have thought of that. Will be great to see this replicated by the masses so we can see some conclusive results!
I think these girls may be onto something, perhaps changing the frequency of these devices (more testing involved of course, until finding a frequency which doesn't interfere, in this case with the plants) would be both a wise and interesting next approach? Just my 2 cents. Edit. If plant life is affected and bird life too (I believe a Dutch study was made of Storks nesting in cell phone towers) then it is logical to assume/or/conclude, that humans would be effected too, I think. In any case, there is almost no escaping this type of radiation today anyways so more research would, IMO, be welcome.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, it would be even better to involve the students in the professional follow-up experiment, and possibly give them some credit for any findings. Not only would it heighten their interest in science, it would validate their experience even if it turns out that they got something wrong.
I have a lot of difficulty sleeping, I'm going to switch my phone off at night and see whether it helps. I couldn't care less if an improvement was because of that or a placebo
Too many variables to be taken seriously, especially given how much testing has been done on wifi over the years. But good for them for taking the initiative.
How do you know? I haven't looked in detail at this story, but to dismiss the findings like that is uncalled for. Of course there will be variables which would have been unavoidable - it was in a school (noise, aircon location etc.) after all. This is why further research is needed. Counter to that, of course, is that pretty much anyone can grow water cress - it will thrive in a wide variety of environments. oh dear...