Wi-Fi. This has become the most commonly used phrase in the current advanced technology. Wi-Fi is all around us, calmly and invisibly controlling our access to the world’s information. But some of us have a sense of what wi-fi truly is, let solely what it would look like if we could see it. By now, you’ve apparently learned about matters regarding Wi-Fi signals and the well-being of plants and animals. No matter whether it is living beings or plants there seems to be proof to propose that these Wi-Fi signals have more of an impact on the environment and surroundings than we notice. It means that long term is concealed but none of them have a concern about it because status updates and tweets are just too important for us.
Instead of converging on the health perspectives, some of them have focused on the hidden philosophy of the digital soup we are all swimming in on a continuous basis. In fact, it is exceptional because it presents us our perspective about Wi-Fi in a way we’ve expected never had back. Artist Nickolay Lamm, who is a blogger for MyDeals.com, determined to shed some light on the topic. Meanwhile, he created visualizations that imagine the size, shape, and color of Wi-Fi signals were they visible to the human eye.
Nickolay Lamm – Artist Who Visualized Wi-Fi Signals
Nickolay Lamm is a 24-year-old student from Pittsburgh, is focused on using illustrations to draw attention to issues that are contrarily neglected. His projects blend art and research, and he frequently collaborates with other artists, including his mother.
He actually works on various projects that are truly unique and incredible. In the last couple months, his projects includes:
- Visualization of what Barbie would look like as a normally proportioned woman.
- What the average human might look like in 100,000 years?
- What New York City would look like on other planets?
As far as wi-fi works, he’s not the primary artist whose curiosity was excited by the invisible force.
“I feel that by showing what wi-fi would look like if we could see it, we’d appreciate the technology that we use everyday,” Lamm told me in an email. “A lot of us use technology without appreciating the complexity behind making it work.”
To estimate what this would look like, Lamm worked with M. Browning Vogel, Ph.D., an astrobiologist and former employee at NASA Ames. Dr. Vogel explained the science behind wireless technology, and Lamm utilized the information to create the visualizations.
How Wi-Fi Signals are Transmitted?
Dr. Browning Vogel provided captions for each illustration describing the science of Wi-Fi. Here’s something that describes the size of a wi-fi energy field, and how a signal is transmitted. Just read it and wonder how Wi-Fi signals are transmitted.
Wifi is an energy field that is transmitted as waves. The waves have a certain height, distance between them and travel at a certain speed. The distance between wifi waves is shorter than that of radio waves and longer than that of microwaves, giving wifi a unique transmission band that can’t be interrupted by other signals. Wifi waves are about 3 to 5 inches from crest to crest. The crests of waves are translated to a 1 by a computer, and the troughs equal a 0. Chains of 1s and 0s that can be translated into the letters, numbers and codes that make up websites, email, and other internet content.
Also Read: Hack Wi-Fi Network – Two Simple Methods
Typical wifi waves diminish in amplitude as they travel farther from the source which is why the waves are larger to the right and smaller to the left, assuming the source is somewhere near the right of the image. This image shows an idealized wifi data transmitted over a band that is divided into different sub-channels, which are shown in red, yellow, green and other colors.
Have a look at the images of Lamm along with Dr. Vogel’s captions below:
Wifi waves travel through space as rapid, data encoded pulses or waves. A freeze frame of these pulses would show that the pulses are about 6 inches apart (as shown by the lightly colored bands traveling through space in this image). Wifi routers are basically the antenna that can send data over multiple frequencies all at the same time. These multiple frequencies are shown as blue, green, yellow, and red colors that pervade the space around the mall. The data from these multiple frequencies swirls around in space as shown here, but can be translated using a common tag system understood by wireless devices.
Wifi routers or antenna can be attached to trees, buildings, lamp posts and other structures. A typical outdoor router can project its signal 300 feet or more from its location. Objects such as trees can obstruct the signal such that it has to be augmented by multiple wifi routers placed in different positions. Multiple routers can create a field that extends all the way across Washington DC’s National Mall as shown here.
Wifi occupies the radio frequency band of the electromagnetic spectrum between actual radio waves and microwaves (used to listen to the game, and cook your dinner, respectively). This frequency band means that wifi boxes and computers can send and receive data as an electromagnetic wave that has a 3 to 5-inch distance between each pulse of the wave. The wifi pulses are shown here as multicolored spheres radiating out from the source, near the right of the image.
Wifi transmitters are basically an antenna equipped with a transmission protocol that splits the frequency band into several segments, referred to as channels. Data can be transmitted over each channel or in order to send and receive greater quantities of data at faster rates. Although color represents its own unique, visible segment of the electromagnetic spectrum, we use red, orange, yellow and other colors to show the invisible wifi channels that make up the overall wifi signal. Wifi fields are usually spherical (like the one here) or ellipsoidal and extend about 20-30 meters, assuming a typical off the shelf wifi box.
Wifi routers affixed to buildings, lamp posts and other object create a circular data field around them. These antennae have an omnidirectional signal that extends equally in all directions, shown as the circular bands. Wifi broadcasts at a frequency between radio and microwaves, meaning that the waves or pulses are about six inches apart, as shown by the colored, circular bands.
Lamm’s illustration might be the most extensive, though. The outcomes of long-term Wi-Fi exposure are yet to be known.
