Look up the DIY parabolic reflectors people used to use on their WiFi antennas, they did actually work! I used one and recorded a marked improvement in WiFi strength at the furthest point in my home that was previously a low connection quality spot.
Radio waves come out of an antenna and just go in every direction, so a router against your outer wall is wasting a lot of its energy just directed into the neighbour’s house. If you can reflect some of that back in, you get improved signal reception. It’s very cool :-)
It’s the same principle of al satellite dish and it works, but I’m 86% sure that mirrors won’t affect wifi, so we’re still not at 100% but getting there.
Microwave ovens work by exciting water molecules using many hundreds of watts of ~2.45 GHz microwaves.
This specific frequency has a heating effect on water, so when you blast enough of it at food, which is often very saturated with water, it will heat up. The heat energy will transfer to the rest of the molecules in the food by contact.
That’s the general idea at least… I’m sure there’s more interactions that happen, water is just the most significant, to my knowledge.
So the protection in the microwave is capable of reflecting (for the purposes of containment) 2.4Ghz microwaves very well, and bluntly, does a good job with many other radio waves too, across a pretty broad band of frequencies… so the material that makes up the protective chassis of a microwave is ideal for making a reflector for wifi, since it was constructed with the idea of reflecting 2.4Ghz frequencies. Microwave ovens create the signal fairly crudely with a magnetron, but the underlying concepts are the same.
So, wifi is made up of radio waves, specifically micro waves, which are all sub-classifications of electromagnetic waves.
There’s another common electromagnetic wave you’ve certainly heard of: visible light.
While the wording is a bit awkward, the previous poster isn’t wrong. Just, in radio, it’s referred to as a reflector, not a mirror. Same principle, different area of technology.
EM is incredibly interesting especially since all data communication, with the exception of copper wires, is EM. Fiber optic is light, which we’ve established, is EM, and wifi is radio, which is also EM. Apart from the copper in your ethernet/DSL/Coax cable, it’s all EM. It’s fascinating to me that we use EM for so much, and fiber is considered the pinnacle of data connections, yet, light propagates slower through glass than radio propagates through the atmosphere, so technically, wifi can get a signal from A to B faster than fiber can… and we put that stuff in our house.
All EM is at, or near, the speed of light. Glass, used in fiber, tends to slow the light down about 30% or so… that’s fascinating because the internet is largely fiber, and so the information for this or anything else on the internet is being delivered to your device at, or very near the speed of light.
Anyway, I’m off topic. I’m just a gigantic nerd about this stuff.
I’m about 62% sure this is a joke…
Please help, I’m clueless about this kind of stuff.
Look up the DIY parabolic reflectors people used to use on their WiFi antennas, they did actually work! I used one and recorded a marked improvement in WiFi strength at the furthest point in my home that was previously a low connection quality spot.
Radio waves come out of an antenna and just go in every direction, so a router against your outer wall is wasting a lot of its energy just directed into the neighbour’s house. If you can reflect some of that back in, you get improved signal reception. It’s very cool :-)
I think mirror won’t work, but this might:
It’s the same principle of al satellite dish and it works, but I’m 86% sure that mirrors won’t affect wifi, so we’re still not at 100% but getting there.
Depends on what frequency your “mirror” mirrors.
A traditional one reflects higher frequency of electromagnetic rays (visible light) than what you need for wifi (in the microwave frequencies)
So you’re saying the walls of an old microwave might do the trick
Jokes aside, anything made of metal will be a good enough reflector for most consumer use.
A coke can cut vertically in half makes a great parabolic relfector. Pepsi can maybe. Dr pepper not recommended.
Actually yes.
Microwave ovens work by exciting water molecules using many hundreds of watts of ~2.45 GHz microwaves.
This specific frequency has a heating effect on water, so when you blast enough of it at food, which is often very saturated with water, it will heat up. The heat energy will transfer to the rest of the molecules in the food by contact.
That’s the general idea at least… I’m sure there’s more interactions that happen, water is just the most significant, to my knowledge.
So the protection in the microwave is capable of reflecting (for the purposes of containment) 2.4Ghz microwaves very well, and bluntly, does a good job with many other radio waves too, across a pretty broad band of frequencies… so the material that makes up the protective chassis of a microwave is ideal for making a reflector for wifi, since it was constructed with the idea of reflecting 2.4Ghz frequencies. Microwave ovens create the signal fairly crudely with a magnetron, but the underlying concepts are the same.
So, wifi is made up of radio waves, specifically micro waves, which are all sub-classifications of electromagnetic waves.
There’s another common electromagnetic wave you’ve certainly heard of: visible light.
While the wording is a bit awkward, the previous poster isn’t wrong. Just, in radio, it’s referred to as a reflector, not a mirror. Same principle, different area of technology.
EM is incredibly interesting especially since all data communication, with the exception of copper wires, is EM. Fiber optic is light, which we’ve established, is EM, and wifi is radio, which is also EM. Apart from the copper in your ethernet/DSL/Coax cable, it’s all EM. It’s fascinating to me that we use EM for so much, and fiber is considered the pinnacle of data connections, yet, light propagates slower through glass than radio propagates through the atmosphere, so technically, wifi can get a signal from A to B faster than fiber can… and we put that stuff in our house.
All EM is at, or near, the speed of light. Glass, used in fiber, tends to slow the light down about 30% or so… that’s fascinating because the internet is largely fiber, and so the information for this or anything else on the internet is being delivered to your device at, or very near the speed of light.
Anyway, I’m off topic. I’m just a gigantic nerd about this stuff.