Boeing wanted to make sure that no matter where you’re sitting on one of its planes you would have a reliable WiFi connection. To test in-cabin WiFi signals they turned to an unlikely testing partner: the potato — about 20,000 pounds of spuds to be exact.
Why potatoes? “[P]otatoes were ideal stand-ins for passengers, given their similar physical interactions with electronic signal properties,” Boeing said in a press release. They also helped reduce testing time from 2 weeks to 10 hours. Boeing explains the testing process in the video below (plus, see an airplane cabin like you’ve never seen it before):
Image: Boeing
[h/t The Atlantic]
