Slashdot Mirror
Preempting Hailstone Formation To Protect Cars
Makarand writes "Nissan has become the first automaker in the United States to start using
a device that suppresses hail formation to protect its fleet of new vehicles
from hailstorm damage. The device is a cannon capable of shooting sonic waves upto
50,000 feet in the air to keep hailstones from forming. The
device comes with its own weather radar and activates when it detects
conditions favorable for hail formation. The device can provide
hailstorm protection in an area with one-mile radius by firing
sonic waves every five seconds."
What is not mentioned in the article is that this sonic cannon was sold to Nissan by Toyota, who knew that the technology is useless against the latest fleet of Goa'uld motherships.
Now they just need sharks with frikkin' radar beams.
I have bad karma....
Open source is heavenly, Microsoft is the devil, SCO is going to hell
They found the device to be effective against hail, but couldn't figure out the recent surge in bat dropping related damage.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
...instead of having hail fall on your car, 747s do.
was known as a roof.
Sure it will protect cars from hail, but what about all the falling pigeons?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
In related news, Timothy has posted 10 latest news consecutively! Yay Timothy! :) I think you have the device that surpresses Taco from posting ;)
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
They forgot to mention that Nissan's high frequency sound doesn't disrupt the hailstone process, it just tells the hailstones not to hit Nissan cars!
Customer Rep. Exec: Apparently consumers are complaining about hail damage to their cars.
CEO: Hail damage?
Head Engineer: Great, just great. The biggest problem that people want to complain about, we have no solution for. Hell, we were never even told that this was a problem!
CEO: Ok, ok. Look, we have to think. Does anybody have an idea as to how we handle this?
Guile: Sonic boom!
And so, Col. Guile's post-Street Fighter career, previously up in the air, was solidified.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Any idea what the environmental impact is from these things?
What's that you say? I can't hear you!
Actually, every car I've seen in operation did produce sonic waves (also known as sound). But until now I thought it was because of normal operation, not to prevent hail. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
First reading of the article gave the impression that Nissan's new cars would be equipped with some kind of sound raygun which could be used for far more interesting things than blocking hailstones. Hey, aim that raygun at Ms Jone's house, watch the windows shatter. Cops coming? A little blast of decibels and their cars explode. Not to mention their eardrums and maybe even heads. Ugh.
But no, we're not going to see commercialized versions of the famous Somalian 'technicals', pick-ups with anti-aircraft guns mounted in the back.
Instead it's some kind of 'Highlander 2' plot in which giant rays are going to be beamed into the sky in order to prevent catastrophe raining down.
So, I have three questions.
(a) does anyone actually believe it's possible to stop hailstones forming in the heart of giant thunderclouds whose energies are hugely more than anything we can produce.
(b) what happened to the 'roof'? A simple, yet efficient way of stopping hailstones.
(c) who sold Nissan this thing? I'm looking for a good salesman for my company.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
That said, I'm really curious if it even works.
Of course it works!! Here's a little fun with science you can make yourself that proves how this works.
What you need:
1 peice of paper.
1 speaker, connected to a stereo.
some music.
Start by ripping the paper into little shreds and balling them up into tiny little balls. Next, take all the little balls and mash them together into one big ball.
Now if you have decent speakers you can just set the paperball mass on top of the cabinet. For those wussy computer speakers, I recomend turning it on it's side and placing the ball directly in the cone.
Now crank up your volume and watch what happens to those little balls. They start dancing around and the bigger ball falls apart! See! Now imagine that on a smaller scale, say ice crystal size. That is exactly what is happening to the hail when it gets sonically blasted.
almost 3 years ago. I guess we now know what happened to Hailstorm.
RTFM: this is designed to protect the car park of thousands of new cars, to stop them getting dented predelivery. They're not mounting sonic cannon on the roof of each vehicle, although if it was an option I *would* buy it!
Yes. It will interfere with hailstone formation. Next question?
Well, if thats 120 db of any Britney song, its bound to have the hail running for the hills.
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
I have a device fitted to my house to prevent damage from hailstones. I call it a roof. It's silent, consumes no power, and also protects against rain, snow, intense sun, falling birds, and a whole host of other things...
This sentence no verb.
... drive nearby sandworms to a frenzy and provoke them to attack the vehicle, swallowing it whole?
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Their new hail protection system has saved them millions of dollars in damage to cars.
However, they system's "sonic boom" has broken millions of dollars in windows.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I don't know if anyone reads IANAL and reads "I am not a lawyer" or if like me you just read "I anal", but seriously, it has to be the worst acronym ever. I'm just glad I finish my law degree at the end of this year and don't have to worry about it anymore....
Nissan don't have them fitted to cars yet
Your thinking of a Volkswagon Golf
:-)
I've never shoed a horse, but I once told a donkey to piss off!
Back in the 1970's I was able to buy a hail damaged new Falcon for $750. Ford was dumping them because the cost to repair the damage would be more than the car was worth. I thought it was a super deal.
It had dozens of quarter sized dimples, and ran really fast. I'm not sure, but it might have benefited from some kind of golf ball wind resistance effect.
When I visited Batlow (the apple capital of NSW) over 14 years ago, they had sonic cannons for hail protection at the time. So yeah, slashdot, "news from the 1980s revisited". I hear that these new fangled phones that don't use wires are coming onto the market too (yup, I saw a homeless beggar using one at the weekend), so maybe slashdot will be reporting on that too? :-)
Now if only they could make a cannon that could get rid of those pesky bike couriers who lean on your car.
Right, if it kills enough birds then their pulverized bodies will protect the cars. When the hail stops all you have to do is brush off the carcasses.
It's usually moderated "Interesting" or "Informative"
Generally, they stay in the trees. Birds flying through a thunderstorm powerful enough to form hail were about to become debris anyway.
yeah but would the article about a new roof over some dealership / autoplant appear on Slashdot?
Think different, people!
Is it me, or does this thing sound like something the guys on Junkyard Wars or MythBusters would build?
*Junkyard Wars Mode*
Today's challenge is going to be all about Changin' the weather! We've assembled two teams of the finest... well, they do make cars and such... People on the planet to build:
A Hail Prevention/Detection device!
Our two teams have just 10 hours to build a device that can do something that mankind has been trying to do for centuries--do something about the weather, instead of just talking about it!
*MythBusters Mode*
Announcer: Tonight on Mythbusters... See if the old saying "I hope your face sticks like that" is entirely possible--using LN2! And later on, Adam and Jamie build something to deal with that pesky weather.
*** Later On ***
Adam: Jimmy--
Jimmy: Yes Adam?
Adam: Have you ever talked about the weather?
Jimmy: Yea, on a couple of my more 'memorable' dates...
Adam: well, wouldn't it be something if we could do something about the weather, instead of just talk about it?
Jimmy: It might be... who knows--I might have been to get into that guy--I mean, girl's pants if I could have stopped the sun from shining, so he couldn't have seen me...
Adam: I'm not talking about no namby-pamby rain here... I'm talking about HAILSTONES here, baby!
Jimmy: Oh god... not another Sonic-Cannon, Adam. We've built 35 of them already--and we've only been on the air for 20 episodes...
Anyone else think of the cloudbusting machine from Kate Bush's music video of this song?
I suppose this will drive neighborhood pooches nuts every time it fires up. This could be a Good Thing if you're not keen on dogs leaving liquid donations on your tires or fender during hailstorms.
;-)
I know! Let's dub the thing the 'W.C. Field(s) Generator!'
I think I'll go take my meds now...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Grapes
If at first you don't succeed, so much for skydiving.
thereby resulting in
rain or sheet
Greeeaat... sheet falling from thee sky... Nissan has gone loco!
Damn...wondering if I can take up a neighborhood collection to get one of these!!
Forget hail; imagine opeating this horizontally! Take out the neighborhood, open up some scenic views.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This is "cat-ions", i.e., ionized cats, not "cations". If you shoot millions of ionized cats into the stratosphere, it does prevent hail storms from forming (but you do have to contend with falling cats).