“Winning this gold medal represents much more than recognition; it’s the result of never giving up, of believing in our ideas, and of working to make them a reality,” posted Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández on her Instagram.The 17-year-old from Altamira, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, invented Vortex Tech, which won gold at the International Science and Invention Fair in Indonesia, held from October 14 to 16. It is a fire extinguisher that puts out flames using low-frequency sound waves instead of water, foam or chemicals.
How the device works
According to media reports, the extinguisher is built from a 12-volt battery, a frequency generator, an amplifier, a speaker, a horn and a bucket modified to work as a cannon. The generator produces a tone of 30 hertz, or 30 pulses per second. The horn converts it into acoustic waves and pushes them towards a circular window at the cannon’s outlet.That creates small vortex rings, which are donut-shaped turbulent flows of air. These rings displace the oxygen that fuels the flame. Venegas told a Spanish newspaper, El País, that the bucket was “something we modified, not one we found in a store.”Now, the idea is not new. Venegas says she got it from a video of a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) experiment, in which “a four-meter sonic cannon” put out a flame with a sonic pulse. In her words, the DARPA demonstration “indicated that the method was feasible.”
A year, five prototypes
The first prototype took two months to build, not counting earlier research, and put out a small flame “with difficulty.” The team reached the fifth version after about a year. Venegas calls it “the one that’s circulating on social media.”She credits her advisor, who is also her uncle, José Arturo Hernández Muñoz. “He has dedicated a lot of time, effort, and dedication, and has been very patient with me, above all,” she told El País.It was also the uncle who got her interested in the first place. At family dinners he talked about the science and technology events he had attended and the people he had met. “I also wanted to go to my own events, so to speak,” she said.Venegas described her uncle as a participant, advisor and evaluator who has represented Mexico internationally.
Who she is
Venegas studies at the Center for Technological, Industrial, and Service Studies (CETis) 78 in Altamira. CETis is a network of public upper secondary schools offering technical degrees, set up in 1968. Her interest in science began in her second semester, when she studied electronics, a subject she never expected to like.She has not decided between electronics and mechatronics, though she says she will most likely study engineering.Media reports also say that she arrived at the University of Indonesia in a china poblana dress, a traditional Mexican outfit.
Who is backing her project
The project had already won at state and national competitions before it reached Indonesia. Venegas says no public or private body has approached her about the device. The exceptions are the local government in Altamira, led by Armando Martínez Manríquez, and the Tamaulipas Ministry of Education, which paid for her to attend national and international fairs.
