Well, a search for "youtube acoustic fire extinguisher" indicates it has already been invented a few times by people all over the world. The most interesting video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvnCQg4w4o8
This seems to be a known technology but hasn't made it as a product.[1] It might have potential for very specific types of extinguishing, such as grills and grain silos, where the distance from extinguisher to trouble spot is fixed.
Generally, you get a lot of skepticism when you see an article about high schooler or teenager inventing or discovering something. This is not completely invalid because there have been lots of cases in the past where things like this are just fluff pieces and not actually real breakthroughs, more of a feel good thing. Add onto that that she’s a girl and Mexican and you get even more detractors of the shiftier variety.
I sure hope humans are in the loop at those companies, reviewing pics that aren't recognized as faces. If I ever see one of those captchas, they'll get to see some things that no human has ever, or should ever, see.
Love when something decides I'm a bot and the decision is final. (Looking at you, CPU-World -- it even lets me know my IP address has been banned for "abuse", too.)
Not exactly acoustic but reminds me of a high school science project we had one year, something along the lines of put out a candle with a contraption. My partner and I rigged up a balloon to be popped by the candle, and the balloon pop blows out the candle. Probably not an original idea, but I don't think any other group in the class tried a similar approach. Worked like a charm.
> Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had.
...meanwhile, some folks at George Mason University were doing this back in 2015[1]:
> The fire extinguisher uses low-frequency sound waves to douse a blaze. Engineering seniors Viet Tran and Seth Robertson now hold a preliminary patent application for their potentially revolutionizing device.
At other frequencies, sound can actually intensify flames, depending on the surrounding environment. Standing waves and the frequency of the sound (FM) are likely factors in this phenomenon. However, it’s not advisable to use sound as a method for extinguishing fires.
Stereotyped as less of a STEM country, probably accurately, so it seems newsworthy plus gives people hope and optimism to hear about cool inventions from there.
when i was in the 5th grade (give or take a couple years), there was an innovation project where we were to bring in and present to the class an invention.
i remember a girl inventing what i now know to be a "flexible weighted dip tube" – think of it as a shampoo bottle that you can pump upside down – and was amazed.
like this submission, the flexible straw wasn't really invented by the student. at best it was independently discovered, but this patent was from at least twenty five years before: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3547296A/en
to that end, i wonder what the point of presenting these inventions as your own are – especially in the time of the internet when prior art is so easily discovered. or, did i miss the point?
It's a standard subwoofer speaker/driver put in a ported enclosure, running at 30Hz, creating a particularly "fast punch" sub. The design of this would have all the same goals of a normal subwoofer: moving a bunch of air at low frequency. You can buy this sort of design to listen to music in your car [1]. It all runs on 12 volts because it's standard car audio equipment.
Subwoofers can definitely harm human ears, but definitely not human flesh. Just don't put your ear up to it.
There's plenty of links in Dublin comments for other instances of the tech being developed at least partially, and at least one for in-home fire suppression. Given that last one, I'm thinking it operates on the basis of resonance rather than amplitude to disrupt combustion.
The reason this keeps getting reinvented is that the physics only half works. Sound disrupts the flame's boundary layer and separates it from the fuel, but it removes almost no heat. The fuel stays above its ignition temperature, so anything hot nearby relights it the second the speaker stops. DARPA demoed this in 2012 and it stalled there. Impressive on a small liquid fuel fire in a lab, very hard to scale to anything you'd actually want to put out.
Yes, I kind of discovered that in a dream, in which I extinguished a fire by teleporting away oxygen. It worked, until I stopped teleporting. The oxygen came back and the fire started again. When I eventually woke up I thought about it and I told to myself that I should have chilled the place, not that it matters in real life. I was also proud of my subconscious' understanding of physics.
I wonder if one could use a thermal camera (or some other, high speed sensor) and some kind of feedback loop to squelch it and keep it disrupted until it cools. Or conversely, manipulate the flame for more complete combustion (in industrial processes).
But granted, I have trouble seeing this work on a large scale without much more sophisticated sonic wave tech.
Well, a search for "youtube acoustic fire extinguisher" indicates it has already been invented a few times by people all over the world. The most interesting video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvnCQg4w4o8
I'll bet that high school girl's science was better than what's in that youtube (it doesn't set a very high bar)
that comparison says more about you than about how high school girls science is
This seems to be a known technology but hasn't made it as a product.[1] It might have potential for very specific types of extinguishing, such as grills and grain silos, where the distance from extinguisher to trouble spot is fixed.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2571-6255/8/4/129
I wonder if she got the idea from https://www.sonicfiretech.com/
When an oil well goes off, high explosives can be used to extinguish it. Maybe this is the same principle.
Paul Neal "Red" Adair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair
very cool! Can we get a link to a not terrible website with real information?
Bold of you to assume there is real information behind this.
I have a hard time charitably interpreting this comment. Care to explain?
Generally, you get a lot of skepticism when you see an article about high schooler or teenager inventing or discovering something. This is not completely invalid because there have been lots of cases in the past where things like this are just fluff pieces and not actually real breakthroughs, more of a feel good thing. Add onto that that she’s a girl and Mexican and you get even more detractors of the shiftier variety.
> Performing security verification
> Verify you are human
Does anyone else command + w on first sight of a cloudflare screen?
I'll tolerate that but that new QR recaptcha that wants a selfie is 'hell fucking no' from me 100% of the time.
There are captchas that demand selfies now? I have never heard of that before and it sounds completely crazy.
Screw that
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/googles-camera-ba...
I sure hope humans are in the loop at those companies, reviewing pics that aren't recognized as faces. If I ever see one of those captchas, they'll get to see some things that no human has ever, or should ever, see.
Nah, I just have my clanker deal with it. It's better at those stupid puzzles than I am.
Cloudflare doesn't do puzzles. It either says you're a bot or you're not a bot.
Love when something decides I'm a bot and the decision is final. (Looking at you, CPU-World -- it even lets me know my IP address has been banned for "abuse", too.)
Not exactly acoustic but reminds me of a high school science project we had one year, something along the lines of put out a candle with a contraption. My partner and I rigged up a balloon to be popped by the candle, and the balloon pop blows out the candle. Probably not an original idea, but I don't think any other group in the class tried a similar approach. Worked like a charm.
> Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had.
...meanwhile, some folks at George Mason University were doing this back in 2015[1]:
> The fire extinguisher uses low-frequency sound waves to douse a blaze. Engineering seniors Viet Tran and Seth Robertson now hold a preliminary patent application for their potentially revolutionizing device.
[]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10569115B2/en
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPVQMZ4ikvM
US military showed a version in 2012 [1], and there is a DARPA report[2]
That said, it's a solid student project. I'm sure she'll do well at university.
[1]: https://www.ifsecglobal.com/uncategorized/soundwaves-a-new-p...
[2]: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20...
It’s frustrating that the site wrote that. I’d wager a taco that she never made that claim.
Oooh.. from the title I thought this was about an extinguisher for when your guitar catches fire. Makes more sense now
At other frequencies, sound can actually intensify flames, depending on the surrounding environment. Standing waves and the frequency of the sound (FM) are likely factors in this phenomenon. However, it’s not advisable to use sound as a method for extinguishing fires.
Instead of FM, maybe they can just use an AY-3-8910?
Why does it matter that she's Mexican?
Stereotyped as less of a STEM country, probably accurately, so it seems newsworthy plus gives people hope and optimism to hear about cool inventions from there.
Or, you know... people like to know more about the bright kid who came up with a cool idea. Not everything is racism.
either one, yeah
Because it's a Chilean blog about feel good stories in Latin America, just like it says on the tin.
Seems to matter to you
when i was in the 5th grade (give or take a couple years), there was an innovation project where we were to bring in and present to the class an invention.
i remember a girl inventing what i now know to be a "flexible weighted dip tube" – think of it as a shampoo bottle that you can pump upside down – and was amazed.
like this submission, the flexible straw wasn't really invented by the student. at best it was independently discovered, but this patent was from at least twenty five years before: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3547296A/en
to that end, i wonder what the point of presenting these inventions as your own are – especially in the time of the internet when prior art is so easily discovered. or, did i miss the point?
I suspect she was pushed along by adults, with particular motives, more than anything.
Regardless, nobody involved is honest, and I suspect the honest ones were told the be quiet.
out of curiosity, would something like this hurt a human? I assume the sound waves must be pretty powerful to put out a fire.
It's a standard subwoofer speaker/driver put in a ported enclosure, running at 30Hz, creating a particularly "fast punch" sub. The design of this would have all the same goals of a normal subwoofer: moving a bunch of air at low frequency. You can buy this sort of design to listen to music in your car [1]. It all runs on 12 volts because it's standard car audio equipment.
Subwoofers can definitely harm human ears, but definitely not human flesh. Just don't put your ear up to it.
[1] https://cadencesound.com/product/tube12vp/?srsltid=AfmBOoqdE...
There's plenty of links in Dublin comments for other instances of the tech being developed at least partially, and at least one for in-home fire suppression. Given that last one, I'm thinking it operates on the basis of resonance rather than amplitude to disrupt combustion.
Seems like a standing wave thing to halt airflow rather than "overpower with Bill & Ted's Awesomeness!".
Depending on what they have going, it might be loud, might not.
This is something from science fiction or a comic book. Super cool!
> Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had.
Hate to be a downer, but this has been done before.
https://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/150th/Plaks.html
for sure, a whole bunch of videos on youtube of various people using acoustics to put out fire. Including MythBusters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2niANODOvJc
But by a 16 year-old Mexican female?
..has been around for a long time.
DARPA worked on it 10+ years ago.
The reason this keeps getting reinvented is that the physics only half works. Sound disrupts the flame's boundary layer and separates it from the fuel, but it removes almost no heat. The fuel stays above its ignition temperature, so anything hot nearby relights it the second the speaker stops. DARPA demoed this in 2012 and it stalled there. Impressive on a small liquid fuel fire in a lab, very hard to scale to anything you'd actually want to put out.
Yes, I kind of discovered that in a dream, in which I extinguished a fire by teleporting away oxygen. It worked, until I stopped teleporting. The oxygen came back and the fire started again. When I eventually woke up I thought about it and I told to myself that I should have chilled the place, not that it matters in real life. I was also proud of my subconscious' understanding of physics.
I wonder if one could use a thermal camera (or some other, high speed sensor) and some kind of feedback loop to squelch it and keep it disrupted until it cools. Or conversely, manipulate the flame for more complete combustion (in industrial processes).
But granted, I have trouble seeing this work on a large scale without much more sophisticated sonic wave tech.
Pangram reports 100% AI; it may be an artifact of translation, but...
I struggle to understand why this article is interesting or upvoted.