Generally, fire is extinguished with water or carbon dioxide. Extinguishing fire through sound bass sounds crazy, but a pair of engineering students from George Mason University have proved it true. The two engineering students have developed an unusual fire extinguisher.
This new generation sonic fire extinguisher puts out flames by only playing heavy bass. Compared to the other chemical compounds of classic extinguishers, this invention offers the cleanest way to put out flames.
The two students, Seth Robertson and Viet Tran came up with the idea of destroying fires with a heavy bass sound. After doing a lot of research, they came up with a nearly non-destructive way to control fires.
This idea is not new. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has tested it before. But the students are the first ones to turn the principle into a practical device.
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Working of Sonic Fire Extinguisher:
It works by using deep bass sounds. Loud and deep bass sound dub music not only with your ears but also with your body. If your chest isn’t rattling, it’s not happening. But the innovation by these engineers makes a little bit of a difference. The gadget they have designed focuses the sound waves in a specific direction instead of spreading them.
In reality, sound waves can potentially control oxygen and burning material. If these two gets separated, the fire dies away.
Sonex fire extinguisher consists of an amplifier and a cardboard collimator to focus the sound.
Engineers primarily tested the device with different sound waves at different frequencies. They realized that it is all about low-frequency bass sounds between 30 and 60 Hz. Therefore, deep bass tunes from hip hop, dub, dubstep, D&B, trap, or grime would also work on flames.
Viet Tran said, “Eventually I’d like to see this applied to, maybe, swarm robotics where they would be attached to a drone and that would be applied to forest fires or even building fires where you wouldn’t want to sacrifice human life.“