the Faraday cage a familiar name but not many people know exactly what it is or how it works and no it's not the cage some bullish of Michael Faraday into that's just called a lot well I'll try to keep this straight a cage is black electricity from going from the outside of the cage to the inside of the cage they can be used to make cool pictures like this one so how does it work first you should understand that initially the cage has zero electric charge also called neutral charge most objects in the world really really want to be neutrally charged and electrons will try to move around and make that happen as electrons may be in the form of a lightning bolt get close to the Faraday cage the cages electrons get freaked out because they want the cage to stay neutrally charged they try to go as far away as they can from the additional electrons if the cage is grounded then the electrons will get pushed to ground and dissipate this happens continuously as the lightning bolts electrons flow into the cage realize there are too many electrons in the cage and then try to get out of the cage by going to ground now this might be a good time to mention that the cages materials must be a material that allows electrons to flow we call these conductive materials things like copper gold and most other metals non conductive materials like wood don't allow electrons to move around so the charge just builds up and then well bad things happen so a Faraday cage insulates the object inside of it by offering a very easy path of free electrons to get to ground the electrons are happy the girls in the cage are happy everyone's happy while lightning strikes are a nice thing to block there's another very useful thing that Faraday cages are used for electromagnetic frequencies things like radio waves ultraviolet rays and most other things in the electromagnetic spectrum are blocked by Faraday cages so your phone won't work very well if it's in a Faraday cage which is why your reception is so bad in an elevator these kinds of waves get blocked because well let's just look at the name electromagnetic frequencies without going into too much detail about how EMF signals propagate by oscillating perpendicularly electronic and magnetic fields the Faraday cage will take the electrical component of the wave and SWAT it to the ground just like the lightning bolt without the electrical portion of the wave the Magnetic portion cannot continue to travel and will dissipate stopping the signal which is very useful for scientists that really need to perform high-precision experiments or you know anyone who really wants to reheat a pizza in a microwave that's why they have the mesh layer by the way now I do feel obligated to mention well the concepts in this video are true the ability for a fraidy cage to work depends on a great many things including but not limited to the material hole size cage thickness and the amount of electric power you want to dissipate it shouldn't surprise you that there's a lot more nuance involved in a Faraday cage design than putting a tinfoil hat on your head so do a bit more research before attempting a stunt like this guy be sure to check out my video that summarizes Michael Faraday's life and his greatest works and as always if you want to see similar content be sure to subscribe to the channel