Discussion on:

The real value in anti-WiFi paint

It seems today that people seem to feel that cell phone/texting/emailing is a God-given right to be exercised whenever and wherever they want.

You are in a movie, and people are talking and texting on cells. In church cells phones are in use. I sing in the choir, and not too long ago a cell phone rang, and we could hear, "I can't talk now because I'm in church". You go to a public meeting, and people are constantly using their cells/Blackberry. You are in the library, and people are talking on their cells. You are on the train, and the guy next to you is yelling into his cell so he can be heard, driving you nuts. The person at the next table in a nice restaurant is having an argument with someone on his cell phone. THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM.

I went to a large public meeting recently where the speaker told people to turn off their cell phones. He told them FOUR times in a row. 10 minutes later a cell phone rang, and he had the person escorted forcefully from the meeting, and some of the others were outraged that the speaker was not nicer!

We need cell-phone free zones.

I think baking foil under wallpaper would do just as good a job.
My house had scaffolding around it for a while. It held the WiFi signal
in; giving a better signal around the house and blocked signals out.

It's in the form of aluminum oxide. This particular formulation resonates with higher frequencies than the tin foil hat you put on your house. (Sorry for the snark -- couldn't resist. Didn't mean anything by it. I'm just overcome by rim shot itis sometimes...)

The newscientist.com article linked at the top of this story says existing paints shield up to 48GHz already. That should work fine for free WiFi (2.4GHz ISM and 5GHz UNII bands), and even most cell phone traffic (900MHz to 3GHz). Why isn't THAT readily available to help mitigate overcrowding of the 3 non-overlapping channels in the 2.4GHz band?

Uhm, would this work on a car to block reflectance of radar
waves?

IIRC, someone already thought of that, and the Pentagon shut
him down.

You'd use this paint on top of the primer coat, and maybe
sprinkle in some nano-scale antennas grown on tiny crystals.

They'd absorb the radar and re-emit it on lower frequencies.

Thus, no radar bounceback.

I'm sure this paint would help, but Most people like having a window to the outside world. Interior industrial doors often use glass panels to make sure the path is clear before opening a door. And GHz frequency RF passes fairly easily through untreated glass.

This stuff would certainly help, but so long as I can look up from my desk and see the cell tower down the road... Or look through the glass in the door and see the hospital's antennas down the corridor...

This would only work on rooms, houses, workplaces without
windows.
Therefore practically no use at all.
Unless we all want to live in bunkers.