Potatoes Can Be Used to Improve Wi-Fi Signals!

Yes, potatoes!

In the early 2000s, while testing in-flight wireless signal transmission on their planes, Boeing made an unexpected discovery: potatoes absorb and reflect radio wave signals in the same way that humans do.

Photo by Boeing Co. via Phys.org.

Wi-Fi on planes has come a long way, but back in the early 2000s, the signals were very spotty in the air. In order to test the Wi-Fi signals and find solutions, engineers need full planes. Instead of making humans sit on parked planes for hours, Boeing engineers used sacks of potatoes in their place!

It took over 20,000 pounds of potatoes to fine tune the radio signals in the Boeing planes and the project was rightfully dubbed the Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution, or SPUDS.