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Posted by rguiscard 9 hours ago

Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds(www.upsocl.com)
210 points | 76 commentspage 2
spottedmarley 7 hours ago|
Oooh.. from the title I thought this was about an extinguisher for when your guitar catches fire. Makes more sense now
shmde 3 hours ago||
Prove you are a human to continue.

No, I dont think I will. closes website

Cloudflare at the forefront of gatekeeping everything on the website

copper-float 7 hours ago||
Why does it matter that she's Mexican?
ajkjk 7 hours ago||
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.
bigstrat2003 6 hours ago||
Or, you know... people like to know more about the bright kid who came up with a cool idea. Not everything is racism.
ajkjk 5 hours ago||
either one, yeah
lern_too_spel 6 hours ago|||
Because it's a Chilean blog about feel good stories in Latin America, just like it says on the tin.
vlugorilla 6 hours ago|||
Seems to matter to you
copper-float 3 hours ago||
No, it doesn't. You're just making a baseless assumption. There's nothing wrong with asking a neutral question.

I wasn't implying anything, just wondering why it needs to be in the title.

rotringlvr 6 hours ago|||
[dead]
fkgkglgkkh 7 hours ago|||
[flagged]
yesitcan 6 hours ago||
[flagged]
pacomerh 6 hours ago|||
oh boy, you're proving the opposite with this "clever" comment.
yesitcan 6 hours ago||
“The average IQ in the United States is typically standardized around 100, while unofficial global internet datasets estimate Mexico's average IQ between 86 and 90”
nomel 5 hours ago||
IQ by state [1]. Remove California, and it'll go up a bit!

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-...

yesitcan 3 hours ago||
And California has a lower IQ because of … Mexicans! (And other immigrants)
jamwil 6 hours ago|||
Found the Argentinian.
rootedbox 7 hours ago||
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 7 hours ago|
Instead of FM, maybe they can just use an AY-3-8910?
earth-tattoo 2 hours ago||
The article starts with a lie: Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had.

As others have mentioned it's not the first time.

So, is the reporter willfully lying, or is so incompetent that couldn't even do a simple Google search? I don't know which is worse.

rolandog 2 hours ago|
I'm not saying you're wrong, but what I'm saying is that children deserve a little bit less froth-in-mouth reactions from us adults. Let's be civil, and give praise for curiosity... given that it takes none to be an armchair inventor.
retsibsi 1 hour ago||
On my read they are criticising the reporter, not the child. We definitely should be careful, in situations like this, not to be nasty to the kids involved. But I think we should still be allowed to be upset by bullshit, and strongly criticize the bullshitters, even when they are bullshitting about a child.
dfee 5 hours ago||
when i was in the 5th grade (give or take a couple years), there was an innovation project where we were to bring in and present to the class an invention.

i remember a girl inventing what i now know to be a "flexible weighted dip tube" – think of it as a shampoo bottle that you can pump upside down – and was amazed.

like this submission, the flexible straw wasn't really invented by the student. at best it was independently discovered, but this patent was from at least twenty five years before: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3547296A/en

to that end, i wonder what the point of presenting these inventions as your own are – especially in the time of the internet when prior art is so easily discovered. or, did i miss the point?

ninalanyon 3 hours ago||
> i wonder what the point of presenting these inventions as your own are

Because if you independently invented it then it is your own.

The value to the student is not necessarily that the idea is novel to everyone else but that is novel to her. And of course the process of invention and development is something that many people never experience, and is valuable in itself.

nomel 4 hours ago|||
I suspect she was pushed along by adults, with particular motives, more than anything.

Regardless, nobody involved is honest, and I suspect the honest ones were told the be quiet.

cactusplant7374 8 hours ago||
> 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 8 hours ago||
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 8 hours ago||
But by a 16 year-old Mexican female?
bawolff 7 hours ago||
out of curiosity, would something like this hurt a human? I assume the sound waves must be pretty powerful to put out a fire.
nomel 4 hours ago||
It's a standard subwoofer speaker/driver put in a ported enclosure, running at 30Hz, creating a particularly "fast punch" sub. The design of this would have all the same goals of a normal subwoofer: moving a bunch of air at low frequency. You can buy this sort of design to listen to music in your car [1]. It all runs on 12 volts because it's standard car audio equipment.

Subwoofers can definitely harm human ears, but definitely not human flesh. Just don't put your ear up to it.

[1] https://cadencesound.com/product/tube12vp/?srsltid=AfmBOoqdE...

zdragnar 6 hours ago|||
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.
_carbyau_ 6 hours ago||
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.

CR1337 6 hours ago|
..has been around for a long time.

DARPA worked on it 10+ years ago.

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