Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Radio Show & Podcast Feedback => Topic started by: thedoc on 05/11/2009 10:57:08
-
This week, we take on your science questions, tackling the sticky subject of how glue works, the explosive potential of underground uranium and the problems with performance enhancing-football shirts. We look into gastroenteritis and find out how just one gram of vomit could infect one million people, and if that hasn't put you off your food, how acrylamide, found in toast and other tasty foods, may cause cancer. Plus, how the future of the paperback could be plastic, and in Kitchen Science we tell you the easy way to keep mirrors mist-free - using only soap!
Listen to this Show (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/2007.12.09/)
If you want to discuss this show, or ask a question, this is the place to do it.
-
Dec. 9th EH.. I see my Question in that list! YAYYYYYY!
-
...SO why do guitar leads intercept taxi radio?
For the same reason that touching the microphone input of any amplifier I seemed to build as a kid resulting in London's Capital Radio (now Capital Gold 1548AM) sounding loud and clear! (I lived in North London)
It's an amplitude-modulated radio wave, which means the amplitude (strength) of the radio wave is adjusted to follow the audio-frequency input signal. Any guitar-lead or connection to the amplifier-input can act as an aerial, and then any diode-like component in the amplifier input rectifies the strong radio signal (and stray capacitance smooths over the bumps) leaving the original (radio) audio signal to be amplified by the amplifier. This ad-hoc radio is untuned, and will respond to any sufficiently strong AM radio signal.
-
Not to sure about all that techmind. [;)]
The reason I say that is taxi radios don't operate on the AM band, they normally transmit on FM.
Any long leads going to or from an amp can pick up stray rf waves, not just on the input side. I have a digital amp that sometimes picks up passing taxi broadcasts from the speaker leads!
Bee