Apparently, cell phones can do more harm to us than simply getting us in trouble for playing Candy Crush and perusing Twitter in class. Grrreat.
What is actually great, though, is that this scientific discovery was made by none other than a group of ninth grade girls. Go young women in STEM! According to a new experiment carried out by five ninth graders at Hjallerup School in Denmark, the radiation emitted by cell phones can have a detrimental effect on life itself. Their hypothesis came about through the observation that when they kept their cell phones by their head overnight, they felt distracted at school the next day. While they did not have the proper equipment to study the effects of cell phone radiation on humans at their school, they were able to produce some striking results when the tested the radiation’s effect on plants (specifically, for all of you plants nerds, a type of garden cress called Lepidum sativum).The young women put six trays of seeds in two different rooms: one without radiation, and another with two routers that emitted about the same amount of radiation as a cell phone. The results were striking.
Obviously, the room with radiation lost this battle completely. These amazing results soon grabbed the attention of scientists worldwide, and earned the talented group of young women top honors in a regional science competition.
The fact that professional scientists are being influenced by a high school science experiment, conducted by girls (who are vastly underrepresented and underappreciated in STEM fields) nonetheless, just goes to show that there’s nothing that young women can’t do! Except keep their cell phones too close overnight. Maybe not that.
Photos via thespiritscience.net
