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A friend of mine claims to have been able to surf the Internet without fuss on a Wi-Fi connection while performing NMR on samples he was analyzing. I would have thought the strong magnets needed for this would have washed out Wi-Fi signals due to the radio waves emitted.

How plausible is his claim?

Or, to be more general, what kind of (electro?)magnet would it take to interfere with mobile devices?

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The frequencies at least have to be in a similar range. – Cedric H. Nov 19 '10 at 11:58
Yes, unfortunately I had neglected to ask how strong (flux density in gauss/tesla) their magnets are and what channel he was using for Wi-Fi. But it would look from your comment that there was no frequency overlap for crosstalk to happen, I guess. :) – user172 Nov 19 '10 at 12:01

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In NMR, the strong magnets set the frequency of the nuclear resonance, using the constant magnetic field.

Typically the resonance radio waves are around the MHz frequencies whereas Wi-Fi is around 2.5GHz. When the frequencies are different, they don't disrupt each other's signals.

Electro-magnets wouldn't interfere, as it is a constant field produced rather than an elecromagnetic wave, and even then it would have to be at the same frequency.

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Thanks for this. :) – user172 Nov 19 '10 at 12:09

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