A conversation with a friend made me suddenly recall that when I was a kid in the early 80’s, we could occasionally hear a faint rendition of the major local AM station coming from the faucet of the kitchen sink. We lived just a mile or two from the broadcast antenna.
It was very faint and had a spooky sizzling quality, but it was unmistakable. Our wall-mounted telephone also picked it up, but more distinctly. I can understand the telephone noise reason, as there’s an amplifier and speaker. But a faucet? How?
In: Physics
The broadcast tower is pumping out a huge amount of energy, likely 50kW in your case. Because it’s AM you don’t need complicated circuitry to demodulate it, just something that vibrates based on how much electricity is flowing through it.
A 50kW speaker would be quite loud at the same distance, it’s only faint because the sink and pipes it’s connected to make a poor radio receiver.
If you’ve heard of crystal radios, those are powered by the radio waves, and work at much longer distance.
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