Creating Magnetic Field Using Electric Lighter and Notebook?

[Marcin H]

So my friend was playing around with an electric lighter like the one below and he put the arc through the metal spirals on his notebook. The hole from the spirals was pointed towards his monitor and whenever he touched the arc of the lighter to the metal notebook rings the laptop monitor would glitch and flash, kinda like turning off for a quick second. Point the spiral hole away stopped this. What is going on here? Is there a magnetic field being created through the coils of the notebook rings and being shot out towards the monitor messing with the components inside or something? The notebook was also like 1-2 feet away from the monitor. Can a magnetic field reach that far? Is this even a magnetic field? What happened?

 

[berkeman]

So my friend was playing around with an electric lighter like the one below and he put the arc through the metal spirals on his notebook. The hole from the spirals was pointed towards his monitor and whenever he touched the arc of the lighter to the metal notebook rings the laptop monitor would glitch and flash, kinda like turning off for a quick second. Point the spiral hole away stopped this. What is going on here? Is there a magnetic field being created through the coils of the notebook rings and being shot out towards the monitor messing with the components inside or something? The notebook was also like 1-2 feet away from the monitor. Can a magnetic field reach that far? Is this even a magnetic field? What happened?

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LOL. Keep it up and he could blow up his laptop. Yes, he is most likely generating mini-EMPs that are messing with the power supply in his laptop. That's a good way to cause an overvoltage that blows the motherboard.

 

[berkeman]

BTW, do not ask me how I know this...

 

[Marcin H]

BTW, do not ask me how I know this...

LOL

 

[Cutter Ketch]

As described I don't believe the disturbance was a magnetic field, or rather not a magnetic field alone. I believe the spiral note book served as an antenna and you were broadcasting radio frequency EM noise. Hertz experiments were very similar, and early wireless communication was by similar spark gap generated broad band noise.