Invention may do for sound what laser did for light
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Lucas uses containers of various shapes to eliminate shock waves
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'It's doing something ... completely impossible'
December 2, 1997
Web posted at: 9:52 p.m. EST (0252 GMT)
From Correspondent Jim Hill
SAN DIEGO (CNN) -- A researcher says he has done something
"completely impossible" by harnessing the power of sound, and
that eventually it will be available in everything from home
appliances to industrial compressors.
Tim Lucas says he made a radical discovery while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that enables
him to create more energy through sound waves than was ever
thought possible.
"It's not an incremental improvement in an existing
technology," Lucas says, "it's suddenly doing something which
before was completely impossible."
Scientists have long known that sound is composed of pulsing
waves of energy, but it was considered useless as a power
source because at high levels sound waves distort into shock
waves.
An example is the way sound distorts on a stereo or radio
speakers when turned up too loud.
But Lucas discovered that by sending sound waves through
empty containers of various shapes, the shock waves were
eliminated.
Clean electric power generators?
"Once you've done that," he says, "you can add all the
energy, create all the pressure, and deliver all the power
that you want."
Lucas calls his invention Resonant Macrosonic Synthesis --
RMS.
He has used it to power such things as a gas compressor, but
believes there is so much potential that he compares what he
has done with sound to what the laser has done with light.
His company, Macrosonix, is working on sound wave compressors
which might one day do everything from cool refrigerators and
air conditioners in the home to running compressors in
factories and on construction sites.
The beauty of a sound-wave compressor is that it would do
what a compressor does, but without the moving parts required
in conventional piston technology.
Mechanical engineering professor Mark Hamilton, who has followed Lucas' work, says, "I don't think the idea struck
people that you could use sound waves to do, say, pumping
that could be used on a commercial scale. And I think that
was the innovative part of the idea here."
Macrosonix researchers say they also hope to use sound to
create clean electric power generators, replacing any number
of machines with the technology of an empty cavity.