Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/28/deadly-am-radio-tower-experiment-hot-dog-speaks-on-contact.html
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Ooph! I feel kind of queasy 
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Yeesh.
There were a couple of these towers near where I grew up and it’s only because they were on the property of an angry farmer with a salt gun that we didn’t try climbing them.
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That was pretty awesome.
Also, I had no idea the whole tower war hot. I would have assumed the base was just a support while the actual broadcast equipment was mounted up top like a cell tower. Thanks for the warning!
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I think there is an age where owners of certain anatomy ask themselves “What next before I can’t?” and that is the dangerous age.
edited slightly
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There’s a comment on the YouTube video explaining how the sausage “speaks”.
Technically this is a so-called plasma speaker. The amplitude-modulated electric arc on the hot dog rapidly heats up and displaces the air around it, which creates the sound.
Plasma speakers are commonly built out of old TV flyback transformers.
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So, wondering how they stole this without evaporating themselves…
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An efficient antenna needs to be closely proportional in length as the wavelength it is intended to transmit. 1/4 or 1/2 wavelength antennas are typical. AM radio frequencies are in the 600-1600 KHz range, meaning 1/4 wave antennas need to be roughly 50-125 meters long depending on frequency. In a portable radio receiver you can roll up the antenna wire, but transmitters work best with a long straight antenna.
In contrast cell phone frequencies are much higher, on the order of 1 GHz, meaning their antennas need to be on the order of 30 cm long.
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All the people with woo woo conspiracy theories about 5G wouldn’t have been able to handle the introduction of this technology.
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I honestly thought someone had changed the title of the Dad Jokes thread again.
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Wow, fascinating. Thanks for the explainer!
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Wow. That’s way stranger than I expected. Add this to the long list of reasons to get rid of AM radio.
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Ablative Hotdog Voices is the name of my new industrial ambient band.
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This is a problem with any broadcast radio technology, not just AM. To get wide geographic coverage from a transmitter with traditional AM or FM radio you typically have to have output power of 100 kW or higher. They note in that video that the transmitter is using only 10 kW to cook that hotdog. You have to be careful around high-power radio transmitters in general because of Dielectric heating - Wikipedia – water is a polar molecule, so an oscillating electric field makes water molecules flip around, which produces heating. And you’re an ugly bag of mostly water, so if you stand near enough to a powerful enough transmitter you’ll experience tissue heating and this can be dangerous at high transmitter power output or close distances. And in fact FM frequencies are much better at dielectric heating than AM frequencies.
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I’ve heard of workers doing antenna maintenance on tall buildings carrying eggs with them. Toss one on the roof for a few minutes to check that the cell carriers shut their antennas down when they were supposed to. Probably exaggerated for effect, but the story makes its point.
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I kinda liked Plasma Speaker
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