By employing an odd mix of the low-tech and the high-tech, Boeing airplane company has developed an advanced method to test wireless signals in airplane cabins, in order to provide a more enjoyable wi-fi experience for the passengers of the aircraft.
Wi-fi signals usually have un-even distribution inside the airplane which may cause wi-fi to work in one seat but not the other. To fix this uneven distribution, engineers first needed to understand how the WiFi signals behave inside a packed airplane. However, finding human volunteers who would sit inside a prototype aircraft for endless hours at a time merely for data collection was next to impossible. That is why they decided to replace humans with something unusual – large bags of potatoes!
During tests through which they aimed to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals, Boeing loaded plane seats with sacks of potatoes. Interestingly enough, the unique content of chemistry and water in potatoes mimics that of humans! According to Boeing, potatoes’ interactions with electronic signals were similar to those of a human body, making them the perfect stand-in motionless passengers for the time being that testing was being carried on.
That means potatoes interact with WiFi signals the way human bodies do. This knowledge quickly prompted Boeing to fill the seats inside a decommissioned plane with large sacks of potatoes. They used a total of 9,000 kg or 20,000 lb of potatoes for this experiment.
