I throw more power into my voice, and now the flame is extinguished," wrote Irish scientist John Tyndall about his experiments with sound and fire in 1857. If only he had Black Sabbath to experiment with...Students at the University of West Georgia are testing his theories over 150 years later to see whether sound waves can douse fires. Such a system might prove useful on Earth for putting out fires in locations whose contents could be water-damaged by sprinkler systems (such as museums or centers with data servers), or even in space.
They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out. I'll be honest, that shitty song would snuff my flame out if I had to hear it.
How's that work (other than the flame retreating from bad music)? Sound travels in waves, which are simply variations of pressure in a medium—whether solid, liquid or gas. The energy from vibrating objects, such as speaker membranes, moves from particle to particle in the air in a repeating pattern of high- and low-pressure zones that we perceive as sound. According to the ideal gas law, temperature, pressure and volume are related; therefore, a decrease in pressure can lead to a corresponding decrease in temperature, which may explain how sound can extinguish a flame. More testing is forthcoming.
"There's some special frequency at which a candle flame extinguishes," the students noted - and that was between 40 and 50 hertz. That's at the edge of the audible low frequencies for humans. Perhaps the reaction is just a just a protective measure by music to keep albums from being burned...although it would be daunting to know that Nickelback albums were harder to destroy.
No comments:
Post a Comment