
When
George Mozurkewich came in
town in the late '90s, I learned that there were more than three heat transfer mechanisms. The ones everybody know are: Conduction, Convection and Radiation. A fourth one presented by
George was
thermoacoustics whereby given the right frequency, sound waves can be modulated to move heat from one place to another. I wonder why these
Thermoacoustic oscillations are not even considered as a plausible explanation for the
reason why fires can be extinguished with sound waves. One could try to check this by making a $25 tabletop thermoacoustic engine (you may want to check
this document to do that) and check it out against different types of flames and frequencies. And while space might be a good place to think about using this technology, I am sure that other areas such as
fire prevention and containment would be much more well served by investigating it. A device using this technique could be called the
Muad'Dib Fire Extinguisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment