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Engineering students put out fire with sound waves

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What began as an idea for a senior research project is now a fully-functional device that really has the Internet talking.

Engineering students Seth Robertson, 23, and Viet Tran, 28, from George Mason University in Virginia invested about $600 of their own money into developing a “somewhat portable” device that can put out fires with low-frequency sound waves.

Tran explained to the Washington Post that sound waves are “pressure waves, and they displace some of the oxygen” and at the right frequency, those waves can separate the fire’s oxygen from the fuel.

“The pressure wave is going back and forth, and that agitates where the air is. That specific space is enough to keep the fire from reigniting.”

Initially, the duo assumed high-frequency sound waves would prove effective in dousing a fire. Instead, low frequencies did the trick.

“But it’s low-frequency sounds—like the thump-thump bass in hip-hop that works,” Tran told the university’s website.

Robertson and Tran applied for a provisional patent on their device last November, which gave them a year to perfect their invention. So far, they’ve only put out fires started with rubbing alcohol, so other flammable chemicals still need to be tested.

“We still want to do a lot more testing to see if we need to change the frequency [to extinguish] other” materials, Tran said, before they spend thousands of dollars on the patent application.

A local fire department, hopeful that the engineers’ device will be able to replace the “toxic and messy chemicals” used in fire extinguishers, wants to test their sound-wave extinguisher on a structure fire, the Washington Post reported.

Another potential application for the device? Fires in space.

“Fire also is a huge issue in space,” Tran said.

“In space, extinguisher contents spread all over. But you can direct sound waves without gravity,” Robertson added.

The device, if successful in putting out larger fires — the inventors hope that the extinguisher attached to a drone will help fight forest fires safely — could prove a game-changer in locations where water and foam are harder to come by..