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."
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
...instead of having hail fall on your car, 747s do.
was known as a roof.
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!
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.
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
... 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...
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.