John Hodgman is a very curious man...and while reading his article and his "Big" questions, I realized I'm not the only one who's always asking questions or wondering how something works. It is amazing to see how rapidly technology is expanding, and this growth just adds more and more questions to further rack my brain.I have always had a specific interest in communication. It blows my mind that your voice can travel through a single cable to someone else's phone and into their receiver? Even better than that though, is how does sound that goes into a cell phone possibly travel through air and happen to land in another person's ear? I decided to do some further investigation on this subject about this same time last year when we were talking about sound waves in chemistry.
It turns out cell phones actually operate with radio frequencies. These are located somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum between the FM (radio waves) and microwaves. Cell phones are split into different geographic zones which are called "cells". (Hence the name "cell" phones) There are base stations in each cell which assign an incoming call an available frequency channel which then receives and sends what is spoken through the cell phone.
Although I have researched this and found a great explanation, I am still slightly confused on how this could possibly work. It wasn't hard to find an answer to this question, it just wasn't the answer I was looking for. If anyone else is interested, here is a great website that explains the in depth process of how cordless, mobile, and portable phones work. http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/cellphonetech.php
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