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[Jeremy Portzer <jeremyp AT pobox.com>]

On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 11:43, Tanner Lovelace wrote:

> Another true story involving radio waves:
> 
> Everyone has heard about receiving radio on your braces, or fillings or
> what not, and generally discounted it as an urban legend, right?  Well,
> I'm here to tell you that it is possible.  My wife, Janell, while needing
> a filling replaced (don't remember if it had dropped out or what) actually
> received radio signals in her head.  It wasn't like anything you've heard
> were people could turn their head and get different channels.  In fact,
> it couldn't really be understood at all, since it was quite muffled, but it
> was definitely a signal of some sort.  We figured out that it was most
> likely something in the CB range rather than broadcast FM, though.  And, it
> only did it a couple of times.  Of course, then she went and got the filling
> replaced and that stopped it for good, so unfortuantely we couldn't 
> experiment
> more with it, but it definitely makes a good story. :-)

Radio waves can definitely be received on tooth fillings, however I
would expect it to be AM radio waves only.  This could be AM broadcast
radio, or perhaps aircraft radio.  Most two-way radios such as police,
CB, and as you know ham radio*, uses FM.   FM radio requires a much more
complicated circuit to demodulate and it is very unlikely that a tooth
filling would have exactly the right combination of silver amalgam
filling (wire) and tooth (nonmetallic insulation) to simulate the proper
circuit.  However it is very simple to build an AM radio receiver out of
just a few basic electronic parts that can do the job of demodulating
the signal into sound waves, so I could understand how the tooth-filling
would work.

--Jeremy

*single-sideband AM radio, as used by hams, also requires a
significantly more complex receiver circuit, so I'd be surprised if a
tooth filling could receive that too.  *grin*

-- 
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| Jeremy Portzer        jeremyp AT pobox.com      trilug.org/~jeremy     |
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