Expert proclaims mobile phone popcorn video on YouTube a sham

Melbourne, June 24 : A video on YouTube showing a group of wacky pranksters cooking popcorn with their mobile phones has now been declared a sham.

The clip shows the gang calling their phones placed around a handful of kernels, which immediately causes the popcorn to explode.

The video has got around million hits ever since it has appeared on the video sharing website.

Physics professor and author Louis Bloomfield claimed that the trick, though certainly clever, was a complete sham.

"Ringing the phones doesn't help because they're interfering with each other and receiving a signal (from a mobile phone tower) - not transmitting it," The Daily Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

He agreed that heat could be produced by sound, but insisted that the low volume of sound from mobile phones could not generate enough heat to burst popcorn.

"It would be like gathering opera singers together to sing, and trying to make the corn pop," said Bloomfield.

In fact, it is being speculated that the ad is just a viral marketing campaign for Bluetooth headsets.

Bloomfield said that in a microwave oven, energy excited the water inside popcorn kernels until it turned into highly pressurised gas, causing the kernels to pop.

He stressed that if mobile phones could emit that much energy, the water in the fingers of people holding them would heat up.

"It would hurt like crazy. Cellphones probably warm your tissues, but studies indicate that's not injurious," he said.

However, he claimed that the reason behind this unusual heating of kernels was nothing but tricky video editing, or involved a heating element hidden beneath the table.

ANI