Drivers are blown away by bizarre-but-true life hack to increase the range of your key fob
DRIVERS have been blown away by bizarre-but-true life hack to increase the range of a key fob.
Matty McTech, a PC enthusiast and creator, took to TikTok to share a handy technology trick with his 4.7 million followers.
He can be heard saying: “If you are ever trying to lock or unlock your car but it’s not working because it’s too far away.”
“All you have to do is hold up the key FOB to your head and your brain will act as an antenna giving you way more range than you would normally have,” Matty continued.
And fans were shocked that the car hack actually worked in the video, which has received more than 420,000 likes and over 3,000 comments.
One user said: “This actually works. Adds at least 10ft in my non-scientific experiments.”
Another added: “Open your mouth and you get a lot more range. I don’t know why it works but it works.”
A third quipped: “Never watched La La Land?”
There is a scene in La La Land where Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) helps Mia (Emma Stone) find her Toyota Prius by telling her to hold the remote key to her chin.
The trick works because the head is full of fluid and liquids are good conductors of electromagnetic waves.
When you press the button on the key fob to unlock the car, electromagnetic waves are emitted.
When those waves pass through a body of water, your brain in this case, they are amplified.
It means that the head effectively acts as an antenna, boosting the signal.
Professor Roger Bowley, of the University of Nottingham, explains on YouTube: “The water in my head is going up and down in synchronisation with the rays coming out of [the key fob] because you are so close together.”
He continued: “In effect, you’ve got the protons being pulled upward, then downward, then upward, then downward, because of the oscillating electric field.
“That means they’re behaving rather like a radio aerial [antenna] — as they go up and down, they’re radiating energy.”
Part of the reason humans work so good for this is because about 60% of our bodies are water.
A similar boosting effect can be seen by holding a fob up to a bottle of water.
Using this trick could get you several extra feet worth of range form your car to your key.