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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Not really weird. There's a boundary there between the air in the glass and the glass itself. So you've got a dielectric boundary and you'll get some reflection going on inside the glass. Lots and lots of things reflect radio waves to a certain extent. I'd guess that's what's happening here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-line-of-sight_propagation#R...

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I don't think by weird the op meant "Wow, this is a miracle that can't be explained by science." It was more along the lines of "Wow, this interesting and I would never have expected that to work. And boy would it look strange if everyone walked around with their phone in a cup."

And I agree with that statement. So yes it is weird, despite the fact that it has an explanation.

Is this a good illustration of the phenomenon?

http://i.imgur.com/cDgjD.jpg

The glass is the antenna and the shape (here a circle) radius at a given point is the signal strength at that point.

The glass is exploiting some anisotropies(?) in the cell phone signals. i.e. the red arc is somehow bigger than the black arc. I am using the circle as a way to depict an isotropic signal. If the signal is not isotropic, the shape would be somewhat more bulged in the left region (pear-shaped).

Sorry, IANAP, if someone can explain it better...

I think what OP is referring to is when light hits glass, some times it is reflected and sometimes it will move through the glass, depending on the angle it makes with the surface of the glass. So the signal is probably bouncing around inside the glass so the phone is able to pick it up.

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