Have you ever been in a situation where your Car Key Fob just wouldn’t unlock your car from a distance? You might have heard the trick: hold the key fob to your head, and suddenly, it works! It sounds strange, even a bit silly, but many people swear by it. But does holding your car key fob to your head actually improve its range, or is it just a quirky myth? Let’s explore the science – or lack thereof – behind this common belief.
The original observation often goes something like this: “My car key fob wasn’t working, I held it to my head, and then it worked!” This leads to the conclusion that holding it to your head made it work better. However, this kind of observation is a perfect example of what scientists call selection bias. You’re only noticing and remembering the times when the key fob didn’t work initially and then did work after trying the head trick. What about all the times the key fob worked perfectly fine without any head-holding intervention? Those instances don’t stand out, so they’re easily forgotten, skewing your perception.
To truly test if holding the key fob to your head improves its performance, you’d need a much more rigorous approach. You’d have to systematically test the key fob’s range both with and without holding it to your head, in various locations and under different conditions. Simply noticing a success after trying something doesn’t mean that action was the cause of the success. It could be entirely coincidental.
This kind of flawed reasoning is a common human tendency. We often look for patterns and attribute success to rituals or actions, even when there’s no real connection. Think about the old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game cartridges. They were notorious for sometimes failing to load games. The popular “fix”? Blowing into the cartridge before reinserting it.
Kids in the 80s were convinced that blowing on the cartridge, maybe combined with other rituals like jiggling it or pressing the reset button repeatedly, was the magic solution. In reality, removing and re-inserting the cartridge, and sometimes rebooting the NES, was just giving the system another try. Eventually, through random chance or a slight adjustment in the cartridge’s position, the game would load. The blowing and other rituals were just superstitious actions tagged onto a process that was already prone to occasional success simply by retrying. It wasn’t the blowing that fixed it; it was just giving it another go.
Similarly, with your car key fob, it’s possible that the act of bringing it closer to the car while you’re experimenting with holding it to your head is actually what makes the difference. Or maybe the key fob was just going to work on that next button press anyway. It’s easy to mistake correlation for causation.
Now, to be fair, holding a conductive object like your head near a radio transmitter will change how the radio waves are emitted. Your head is full of water and electrolytes, making it somewhat conductive. When you hold the key fob to your head, you are indeed altering its electromagnetic radiation pattern. But does this alteration make the signal better for reaching your car’s receiver? That’s the crucial question, and the answer isn’t straightforward.
It’s theoretically possible that your head, being a larger object than the tiny antenna inside the key fob, could act as a kind of antenna extension or reflector. A larger antenna could be more efficient at radiating radio waves. Your head could also, potentially, focus the radio waves in a particular direction, perhaps towards your car.
However, it’s equally possible that your head could actually reduce the key fob’s effective range. Your head isn’t made of copper or another ideal antenna material. It’s less conductive, and it might absorb some of the radio energy, making the signal weaker. It could also distort the signal in ways that are not beneficial for reaching the car’s receiver. The truth is, without proper testing, we simply don’t know for sure what effect your head has on the signal’s effectiveness.
Despite the widespread belief and anecdotal stories, there’s no scientific evidence to support the idea that holding your car key fob to your head reliably improves its range. All the information available is based on personal anecdotes and poorly designed “experiments.” You won’t find any data from qualified radio frequency (RF) engineers using proper testing equipment to validate this claim.
So, while it might be a fun party trick or a comforting ritual when your key fob seems unresponsive, the “head trick” is most likely just a myth perpetuated by selection bias and a misunderstanding of how radio signals work. If your car key fob is consistently failing to reach your car, it’s more likely due to low battery, interference, or a genuine issue with the key fob or your car’s receiver, rather than a magical signal boost from your head.
