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Japanese Twitter has an ingenious way to cool down overheating electronics

Katie Pask Oct 10, 2020
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Keep your laptop (and thighs!) nice and cool with this nifty trick.

Everyone knows the feeling. You’ve finally found a comfortable position with your laptop nestled comfortably on your lap, ready to power your way through the latest episodes of your favourite anime. Just as you’re ready to click play, you hear the familiar roar of the laptop motor, whirring in protest, begging for a break. You realise your thighs are burning, and in desperation you search for a makeshift way to cool down your laptop. Holding it in the air for a while works until your arms get tired. Popping something cool underneath is only a temporary fix.

▼ This is certainly one way to cool down your laptop, but we don’t recommend it.

One suggestion that has been making the rounds on Twitter recently is to use copper to cool down your laptop. Copper has a higher thermal conductivity than aluminium, so it can ‘extract’ the heat and stop your computer from burning a hole in your thighs.

Sure, most of us aren’t the kind of people who have bars of copper just lying around, ready to pop on our laptops whenever they start to overheat. Luckily for those living in Japan, however, ten-yen coins are made of 97 percent copper and allegedly work just as well. In fact, the idea was originally posted over five years ago by Japanese Twitter user @akinori_suzuki –

MacBook Proの内部温度が下がらなくて困ってるという人は、アルミよりも熱伝導率が優れている銅を使って熱を逃がすと良いので、まずは家にある十円玉をかき集めて試してみるべし。 pic.twitter.com/7hc6E8Tky9

— 鈴木秋則 (@akinori_suzuki) November 2, 2015

It’s been buzzing again, due to more people working from home. In particular, the sudden popularity of video conference software Zoom has led to the increase of overheating laptops.

▼ “My MacBookPro was overheating whenever I used Zoom, so I tried out the ten-yen trick I saw somewhere. It instantly cooled down. This is awesome.”

ZOOM連発で熱持ったMacBookProの対策として、どこかで見た10円玉作戦をやってみたが、いきなり熱が引いたよ。これはすごいね。 pic.twitter.com/sn1Wkeop12

— 伊藤羊一 Voicyパーソナリティ/武蔵野EMC学部長 (@youichi_itou) September 28, 2020

There were a whole bunch of similar Tweets backing up the ten-yen coin hack, so I decided to try it out for myself. My trusty MacBook also has a tendency to overheat quickly, so I was keen to see if this trick would actually work.

I opened all of my most energy consuming apps and waited for the familiar whirr, before carefully placing a row of ten-yen coins along the top of the keyboard.

Of course, it’s easier to tell how hot your laptop is depending on if your thighs are burning or not, so I transferred my laptop to my lap. As expected, my thighs instantly became a blazing furnace as they made contact with the bottom of my laptop, but I was somehow able to find the strength to withstand the searing pain, safe in the knowledge that the ten-yen coins would hopefully absorb the heat.

After about five minutes, my laptop had almost completely cooled down. The fan had stopped whirring and the ten-yen coins were warm to the touch. My laptop and thighs were as cool as a summer’s breeze. It worked!

Japanese Twitter users were amazed at the nifty trick for cooling down electronics, with several claiming the trick to work on other electronics too.

“I used to put my laptop on a magazine with an ice pack underneath. My old laptop was a lot more prone to overheating than my laptop now.”
“So I’m using money, but I’m not spending money. Genius!”
“Looks like an arcade, with people lining up their coins ready to play.”
“This works on iPhones, too! When I make TikTok videos, my phone instantly overheats. I use this ten-yen trick so much that I even keep the coins shiny with lemon juice!”
“I tried it on my WiFi router and it worked too!”

One user had some sage words of advice to anyone wishing to try this hack themselves.

“Be careful if you’re someone who is careless like me. I tried this, closed the laptop with the coins still there and broke my display.”

If you have electronics that are prone to overheating, give this hack a try. For those living outside Japan, coins with a high copper content will work just as well, such as the UK two pence coin or the Australian two cent coin. Unfortunately, the American nickel is only 75 percent copper, so may not work as well.

It’s easy to forget just how versatile ten-yen coins can be, and once you’re done using them to cool your laptop you can use them to splurge on some sushi!

Source: Hamsoku
Featured image: Pakutaso
Images: ©SoraNews24, Pakutaso
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