Student Science Experiment Finds Plants Won't Grow Near Wi-Fi Router

Garden cress herbs away from Wi-Fi (left) and near a signal (right). (Photo: Kim Horsevad/Hjallerup Skole)


It started with an observation and a question. The girls noticed that if they slept with their mobile phones near their heads at night, they often had difficulty concentrating at school the next day. They wanted to test the effect of a cellphone's radiation on humans, but their school, Hjallerup School in Denmark, did not have the equipment to handle such an experiment. So the girls designed an experiment that would test the effect of cellphone radiation on a plant instead, according to Dutch news site DR.




The experiment earned the students a spot in the 'Young Scientists' competition.
The experiment earned the students a spot in the 'Young Scientists' competition. (Photo: Kim Horsevad)

According to Kim Horsevad, a teacher at Hjallerup Skole where the cress experiment took place, a neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is interested in repeating the experiment in a controlled professional scientific environment.