Boost Your Car Key Fob's Range — With Your Head (Yes, Really!)
This is the most exciting car hack we’ve seen in, well, forever.
Watch closely as Canadian Ricky Tang walks away from his car, attempts to lock it from a distance, fails, and then uses his own head as a transmitter to lock the car with his remote.
Um, what?!?!?!
Notice how far Tang is from the black car at the end of the lot. Pointing his key fob at the car from this distance fails, but pointing it at his head doubles the distance that it can work. For real. (Credit: Science Channel)
There are so many situations where this hack could be a total save, ones we’re all privy to. Like, you’re halfway through the grocery-store doors and realize (doh!) that you forgot to lock your car. Or you’re desperately mashing the button on your key fob in hopes of hearing the telltale beep that will lead you to your car.
If you have a key fob — and a head — this hack will work.
But … how?!
The key (pun intended) is water. Your noggin is mostly made up of water (about 75 percent) and those water molecules amplify the key fob’s signal.
“You are capacitively coupling the fob to your head,” Tim Pozar, a Silicon Valley radio engineer, told the New York Times. “With all the fluids in your head, it ends up being a nice conductor. Not a great one, but it works.”
The tech site Tom’s Hardware has a more detailed breakdown of how it works. Your skull is like a “rabbit ears” antenna for an old TV, they helpfully explain.
Even though this trick has been well known for years, few people seem to be aware of it. The popular U.K. car show Top Gear tried it more than a decade ago and the hoax-debunking site Snopes.com has had a vigorous (and sometimes profanity-laced) discussion among commenters for just as long.
Perhaps it just seemed too weird for people to accept.
The water molecules in your head transform the key fob’s signal into an electromagnetic wave. (Credit: Science Channel)
Is it safe to zap your brain with an electrical signal?
Scientists say yes. A car remote only produces a small amount of electrical power for a small amount of time. Your brain, they claim, can handle it.
“Current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low-level electromagnetic fields,” concludes the World Health Organization. (Of course the Internet is full of opinions, but mainstream scientific research seems confident your remote won’t cook your noggin.)
We immediately tried this one ourselves. And though you might feel like a fool pointing your key fob at your chin, this trick works. We tried it from roughly 300 feet away, and still saw our lights flash.
Go try it out!
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