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Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds

https://www.upsocl.com/en/16-year-old-mexican-student-creates-an-acoustic-fire-extinguisher-that-uses-sound-waves-to-put-out-fires-in-seconds/
61•rguiscard•2h ago

Comments

bentt•49m ago
very cool! Can we get a link to a not terrible website with real information?
cwillu•44m ago
Bold of you to assume there is real information behind this.
nomilk•37m ago
> Performing security verification

> Verify you are human

Does anyone else command + w on first sight of a cloudflare screen?

gonight•25m ago
I'll tolerate that but that new QR recaptcha that wants a selfie is 'hell fucking no' from me 100% of the time.
ssl-3•46m ago
> 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

Anduia•33m ago
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...

joeypickles•19m ago
It’s frustrating that the site wrote that. I’d wager a taco that she never made that claim.
frickinLasers•46m ago
I wonder if she got the idea from https://www.sonicfiretech.com/
cactusplant7374•46m ago
> 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

keithnz•43m ago
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
gblargg•42m ago
But by a 16 year-old Mexican female?
cwillu•44m ago
Pangram reports 100% AI; it may be an artifact of translation, but...
nilslindemann•43m ago
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
mulanroo•34m 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.
bawolff•21m ago
out of curiosity, would something like this hurt a human? I assume the sound waves must be pretty powerful to put out a fire.
kevin_nisbet•18m ago
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.
Animats•17m ago
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

spottedmarley•13m ago
Oooh.. from the title I thought this was about an extinguisher for when your guitar catches fire. Makes more sense now
rootedbox•11m ago
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.
dosisking•7m ago
Instead of FM, maybe they can just use an AY-3-8910?

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Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds

https://www.upsocl.com/en/16-year-old-mexican-student-creates-an-acoustic-fire-extinguisher-that-...
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