YHK - yet another hacker news clone

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

95 points rguiscard 3 hours ago 38 comments

bentt 1 hour ago | parent

very cool! Can we get a link to a not terrible website with real information?

cwillu 1 hour ago | parent

Bold of you to assume there is real information behind this.

nomilk 1 hour ago | parent

> Performing security verification

> Verify you are human

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

gonight 1 hour ago | parent

I'll tolerate that but that new QR recaptcha that wants a selfie is 'hell fucking no' from me 100% of the time.

CamperBob2 1 hour ago | parent

I sure hope humans are in the loop at those companies, reviewing pics that aren't recognized as faces. If I ever see one of those captchas, they'll get to see some things that no human has ever, or should ever, see.

CamperBob2 1 hour ago | parent

Nah, I just have my clanker deal with it. It's better at those stupid puzzles than I am.

mitxela 44 minutes ago | parent

Cloudflare doesn't do puzzles. It either says you're a bot or you're not a bot.

ssl-3 1 hour ago | parent

> 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 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

It’s frustrating that the site wrote that. I’d wager a taco that she never made that claim.

frickinLasers 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder if she got the idea from https://www.sonicfiretech.com/

cactusplant7374 1 hour ago | parent

> 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 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

But by a 16 year-old Mexican female?

cwillu 1 hour ago | parent

Pangram reports 100% AI; it may be an artifact of translation, but...

nilslindemann 1 hour ago | parent

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

fsckboy 54 minutes ago | parent

I'll bet that high school girl's science was better than what's in that youtube (it doesn't set a very high bar)

mulanroo 1 hour ago | parent

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.

rkagerer 45 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if one could use a thermal camera (or some other, high speed sensor) and some kind of feedback loop to squelch it and keep it disrupted until it cools. Or conversely, manipulate the flame for more complete combustion (in industrial processes).

But granted, I have trouble seeing this work on a large scale without much more sophisticated sonic wave tech.

bawolff 1 hour ago | parent

out of curiosity, would something like this hurt a human? I assume the sound waves must be pretty powerful to put out a fire.

_carbyau_ 21 minutes ago | parent

Seems like a standing wave thing to halt airflow rather than "overpower with Bill & Ted's Awesomeness!".

Depending on what they have going, it might be loud, might not.

zdragnar 13 minutes ago | parent

There's plenty of links in Dublin comments for other instances of the tech being developed at least partially, and at least one for in-home fire suppression. Given that last one, I'm thinking it operates on the basis of resonance rather than amplitude to disrupt combustion.

kevin_nisbet 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Oooh.. from the title I thought this was about an extinguisher for when your guitar catches fire. Makes more sense now

rootedbox 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Instead of FM, maybe they can just use an AY-3-8910?

copper-float 57 minutes ago | parent

Why does it matter that she's Mexican?

ajkjk 54 minutes ago | parent

Stereotyped as less of a STEM country, probably accurately, so it seems newsworthy plus gives people hope and optimism to hear about cool inventions from there.

lern_too_spel 45 minutes ago | parent

Because it's a Chilean blog about feel good stories in Latin America, just like it says on the tin.

vlugorilla 1 minute ago | parent

Seems to matter to you

MathMonkeyMan 16 minutes ago | parent

When an oil well goes off, high explosives can be used to extinguish it. Maybe this is the same principle.

johnohara 3 minutes ago | parent

Paul Neal "Red" Adair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair

CR1337 12 minutes ago | parent

..has been around for a long time.

DARPA worked on it 10+ years ago.