Students Come up with New Fire Extinguisher That Puts out Fire Using Sound

Fire extinguishers can be found in any buildings nowadays in case of a fire outburst. The concept of the fire extinguisher hasn’t changed much over the years, but it still does the trick. However, what if someone could come up with another way to put out fires? They just did.

A couple of students from George Mason University are said to have created a fire extinguisher that uses sound to put out flames. While this sounds extremely revolutionary, it unfortunately is not. DARPA is said to have been the first with a similar concept unveiled back in 2012, but the two students, Viet Tran and Seth Robertson, have managed to take the concept and make it portable, something that DARPA has failed to achieve in the past.

The students managed to make the sound-based fire extinguisher work by having the device emit a certain frequency, also named the “Goldilocks zone” that exists at 30-60 Hz, that basically kept oxygen away from the flame long enough to put them out.

Having worked out the design, they moved on in figuring out how to make this theoretical concept into an actual portable design. The students apparently used a sound frequency generator, a small amplifier, and a collimator made out of cardboard with a hole at the end that helps focus the waves in a direction. The result consisted of a device that has no problems putting out a small fire.

With their new design, Tran and Robertson plan to revolutionise firefighting in homes and in the office. However, there is a long way to go before we see these fire extinguishers replacing traditional ones. The students now plan to do more testing and figure out how to make the concept work with different fire types.

Thank you Ubergizmo for providing us with this information