Articles and Stories

September 28, 2025

Picture this: you’re cooking breakfast, hands covered in flour, bacon sizzling — and your phone buzzes. Instead of washing up, you reach for a sausage link and answer the call. It works.

As strange as it sounds, a sausage can, in fact, operate a smartphone screen. Not just any sausage, though. It needs to be moist and salty enough to carry a small electrical current. That’s all your touchscreen really needs — something that mimics the conductive nature of a human finger.

This quirky bit of science came to light thanks to a BBC clip featuring mathematician Hannah Fry, who casually demonstrated how touchscreen technology reacts to anything that can close the circuit — even breakfast meat. The screen doesn’t care if it’s a thumb or a bratwurst. It’s all about conductivity.

While this isn’t exactly a recommended feature in your user manual, it’s a fun reminder of how unexpected things can interact with everyday tech. The capacitive screens we use daily aren’t fussy. If it completes the circuit, it gets the job done.

In the end, it’s a story about how even the most advanced tools we use are still governed by simple physics. And if that means your phone respects a sausage as much as it does your fingertip, so be it.