Poll of the Day > how do cell phones work??

(+) Yeah! (+)

I get that a cell tower signal can reach my phone, but wouldnt my phone have to send a signal back to the tower? I doubt my phone has the power to reach that far
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inside the phone there's a little hamster running on a wheel that powers it
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they dont. Youve just been hearing voices
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These phones have billions of cells composing of its organs and tissues.

Leprechauns.
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Look, if we're being honest, I'm old enough to remember rabbit ears and rotary phones.

Not a day goes by where I don't have a moment where I stare at my cellphone like a caveman. I have a.basic understanding of the technology and how it functions, but I certainly couldn't make one from scratch.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone ask a stupid question while holding a magic rectangle in their hands that effectively gives them access to the world's collective knowledge. You can even configure this magic rectangle so that all you have to do is shout at it ffs.

It boggles my mind that the cellphone exists and most people just take it for granted. Bring one of these and it's functionality back to the year I graduated high school and they would have brought back witch trials and burnt you at the stake.

Case in point. My kid brother who is 13 years younger than me was having car troubles trying to leave work a few months ago. He's standing in the parking lot at his job with a dead car battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a half dozen millennials with cars that start. Every single one of them has a cellphone in their hands. He texts me to ask how to jumpstart his car. I can only facepalm that not one of those millennials thought to Google how to jumpstart a fucking car.

We live in a time when the common man has instant access to more information than the collective sum of all of humanity that came before us ffs and I'm flabbergasted daily by people that are oblivious to how astounding that fact is.

Like I keep saying, we need a new plague.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Look, if we're being honest, I'm old enough to remember rabbit ears and rotary phones.

Not a day goes by where I don't have a moment where I stare at my cellphone like a caveman. I have a.basic understanding of the technology and how it functions, but I certainly couldn't make one from scratch.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone ask a stupid question while holding a magic rectangle in their hands that effectively gives them access to the world's collective knowledge. You can even configure this magic rectangle so that all you have to do is shout at it ffs.

It boggles my mind that the cellphone exists and most people just take it for granted. Bring one of these and it's functionality back to the year I graduated high school and they would have brought back witch trials and burnt you at the stake.

Case in point. My kid brother who is 13 years younger than me was having car troubles trying to leave work a few months ago. He's standing in the parking lot at his job with a dead car battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a half dozen millennials with cars that start. Every single one of them has a cellphone in their hands. He texts me to ask how to jumpstart his car. I can only facepalm that not one of those millennials thought to Google how to jumpstart a fucking car.

We live in a time when the common man has instant access to more information than the collective sum of all of humanity that came before us ffs and I'm flabbergasted daily by people that are oblivious to how astounding that fact is.

Like I keep saying, we need a new plague.

I've watched that joe rogan standup too
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SmokeMassTree posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Look, if we're being honest, I'm old enough to remember rabbit ears and rotary phones.

Not a day goes by where I don't have a moment where I stare at my cellphone like a caveman. I have a.basic understanding of the technology and how it functions, but I certainly couldn't make one from scratch.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone ask a stupid question while holding a magic rectangle in their hands that effectively gives them access to the world's collective knowledge. You can even configure this magic rectangle so that all you have to do is shout at it ffs.

It boggles my mind that the cellphone exists and most people just take it for granted. Bring one of these and it's functionality back to the year I graduated high school and they would have brought back witch trials and burnt you at the stake.

Case in point. My kid brother who is 13 years younger than me was having car troubles trying to leave work a few months ago. He's standing in the parking lot at his job with a dead car battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a half dozen millennials with cars that start. Every single one of them has a cellphone in their hands. He texts me to ask how to jumpstart his car. I can only facepalm that not one of those millennials thought to Google how to jumpstart a fucking car.

We live in a time when the common man has instant access to more information than the collective sum of all of humanity that came before us ffs and I'm flabbergasted daily by people that are oblivious to how astounding that fact is.

Like I keep saying, we need a new plague.

I've watched that joe rogan standup too

Nice try, but that was a true story and the closest standup bit I can think of is Louis CK's bit about his kids and airplanes.
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thecolorgreen posted...

I get that a cell tower signal can reach my phone, but wouldnt my phone have to send a signal back to the tower? I doubt my phone has the power to reach that far

Your phone got that power.
Walkie Talkies from the 80s could send messages to up to 4 square miles during the perfect conditions, and technology has moved forward since then.
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Or you could think of it like wifi. It's not that your device is strong enough to reach the other thing, but more that the other thing is strong enough to receive your signal. It's really the towers doing most of the work. And there are towers *all over* the place.

Granted, thanks to radio waves, even a relatively small device is strong enough to send out a signal received by another small device. Some models of walkie talkies can supposedly send signals up to 50 miles.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

SmokeMassTree posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Look, if we're being honest, I'm old enough to remember rabbit ears and rotary phones.

Not a day goes by where I don't have a moment where I stare at my cellphone like a caveman. I have a.basic understanding of the technology and how it functions, but I certainly couldn't make one from scratch.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone ask a stupid question while holding a magic rectangle in their hands that effectively gives them access to the world's collective knowledge. You can even configure this magic rectangle so that all you have to do is shout at it ffs.

It boggles my mind that the cellphone exists and most people just take it for granted. Bring one of these and it's functionality back to the year I graduated high school and they would have brought back witch trials and burnt you at the stake.

Case in point. My kid brother who is 13 years younger than me was having car troubles trying to leave work a few months ago. He's standing in the parking lot at his job with a dead car battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a half dozen millennials with cars that start. Every single one of them has a cellphone in their hands. He texts me to ask how to jumpstart his car. I can only facepalm that not one of those millennials thought to Google how to jumpstart a fucking car.

We live in a time when the common man has instant access to more information than the collective sum of all of humanity that came before us ffs and I'm flabbergasted daily by people that are oblivious to how astounding that fact is.

Like I keep saying, we need a new plague.

I've watched that joe rogan standup too

Nice try, but that was a true story and the closest standup bit I can think of is Louis CK's bit about his kids and airplanes.

Loius CK also did a bit on phones.
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Magnets
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

SmokeMassTree posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Look, if we're being honest, I'm old enough to remember rabbit ears and rotary phones.

Not a day goes by where I don't have a moment where I stare at my cellphone like a caveman. I have a.basic understanding of the technology and how it functions, but I certainly couldn't make one from scratch.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone ask a stupid question while holding a magic rectangle in their hands that effectively gives them access to the world's collective knowledge. You can even configure this magic rectangle so that all you have to do is shout at it ffs.

It boggles my mind that the cellphone exists and most people just take it for granted. Bring one of these and it's functionality back to the year I graduated high school and they would have brought back witch trials and burnt you at the stake.

Case in point. My kid brother who is 13 years younger than me was having car troubles trying to leave work a few months ago. He's standing in the parking lot at his job with a dead car battery, a pair of jumper cables, and a half dozen millennials with cars that start. Every single one of them has a cellphone in their hands. He texts me to ask how to jumpstart his car. I can only facepalm that not one of those millennials thought to Google how to jumpstart a fucking car.

We live in a time when the common man has instant access to more information than the collective sum of all of humanity that came before us ffs and I'm flabbergasted daily by people that are oblivious to how astounding that fact is.

Like I keep saying, we need a new plague.

I've watched that joe rogan standup too

Nice try, but that was a true story and the closest standup bit I can think of is Louis CK's bit about his kids and airplanes.

This is how I felt when someone was trying to drive my car (which was a standard transmission), and when it wouldn't crank without the clutch disengaged, he just started at me blank, unable to continue. What if I had a heart attack? I would have been dead, because my friend doesn't know how to drive a regular car without a computer doing half the work.

Mr Hangman posted...

An automatic transmission is not a "computer" and it is a regular car. Most of them are automatics. Soon most of them will be electric (no gears at all) and driverless.

I have literally built cars from the ground up for over 20 years, you do not want to have this argument with me. Yes, an automatic transmission is controlled by a computer. You have data feedback from your throttle position (THROTTLE POSITION SENSOR), current speed, current gear, traction conditions (TRACTION CONTROL SENSOR, ANTI-LOCK BRAKE SENSOR) and various other bits of data. The PCM contains data in the software and has a look up chart for when to shift based on that data (such as holding a lower gear at wide open throttle, if safe, so you can remain longer in the power band at expense of fuel economy [this is further reduced by Fuel Enrichment Mode which is engaged at WOT and has its own separate look up chart for AFR data, ignoring your O2 feedback forcing open loop] ) and determines things such as torque reduction between gears, if it should change gears up or down or maintain, so on and so forth. You are incorrect, friend.

Also, you must live in America (I do too), because in the rest of the world, Manual cars are nearly 8:1 instead of the other way around. Electric cars have a single gear ratio because they don't have to maximize torque curve at various points in RPM/speed due to the nature of their design.

lol imagine no driveable cars.

At that point they're not cars, they're taxis. You're imagining a world without personal transportation.
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