fairfolio
Saved Projects

Wave Blockers!

CSEF · 2010 Materials Science (Junior Division Only)

Thomas V. Tuttle · St. Mary's Catholic School, Arcata, Humboldt County

Overview

Objectives/Goals My project was to find out what materials could block Wi-Fi waves the best. Methods/Materials Using a transmitter (an Apple Time Capsule) and a receiver (an Apple MacBook Pro), I encased the transmitter in either aluminum foil, plastic wrap, wrapping paper, steel cake pans, a wooden box, a cardboard box or a lunchbox, and recorded the signal strength of the receiver (in bars, Max=4) at different distances up to 80 meters away. I also did a control test with no material surrounding the transmitter. Results The steel cake pans brought the signal down to 0 in both tests, while the cardboard box, lunchbox and wrapping paper always stayed at 4 bars. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion is that steel is good for blocking Wi-Fi waves, and that a material's thickness may also be a factor when it's blocking Wi-Fi waves.

Summary statement

My project was to find out what materials could block Wi-Fi waves the best.

Help received

Father helped set up the transmitter and took pictures; mother handled the receiver and reported readings.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2010 Materials Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1526

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google