George Mason Students Create Revolutionary Fire Extinguisher That Uses Sound Waves to Blow Out Fires

If you haven’t seen it already: two George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty engi­neer­ing stu­dents — Viet Tran and Seth Robert­son — have cre­at­ed a poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary device, a new-fan­gled fire extin­guish­er, that uses low-fre­quen­cy sound waves to snuff out fires. Accord­ing to Tech­Ex­plore, Tran (a com­put­er engi­neer­ing major) and Seth Robert­son (dou­ble e major) “start­ed with the sim­ple idea that sound waves are also mechan­i­cal or pres­sure waves (due to the back and forth motion of the medi­um in which they pass through), which can cause an impact on objects.” Through tri­al and error, the stu­dents fig­ured out that ultra-high fre­quen­cies did­n’t do very much, but low­er fre­quen­cies (in the 30 to 60 Hertz range) can blow a small fire right out. Just watch above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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