scientist spending their day in a laboratory trying to levitate a large welkin using acoustical wave may not ab initio impress at a dinner political party , but the exploit is in reality more difficult than it sounds . This is because an object does n’t typically levitate if it is larger than the wavelength trying to lift it .
Now , a trio of investigator has demonstrated that this difficulty can be surmounted – even if it all looks rather unimpressive on picture show . They accomplish this exploit with a polystyrene sphere that was 3.6 times larger than the acoustic undulation levitating it . The event of their survey have been published inApplied Physics Letters .
" acoustical levitation of small subatomic particle at the acoustical pressure sensation leaf node of a tolerate wave is well - known , but the maximum corpuscle size that can be levitate at the insistency knob is around one - quarter of the acoustical wavelength , ” said Marco Andrade , lead writer from the University of São Paulo in Brazil , in astatement . " This means that , for a transducer operating at the supersonic range , the maximal particle sizing that can be levitated is around 4 millimeter . ” In this case , that sizing was upped to 50 millimeters .
The desire to harness the tycoon of phone is not a young phenomenon . However , researchers typically achieve acoustic levitation via astanding moving ridge , where the object is buffer by one sound wafture from above and one from below . alternatively , this squad made a stand wave between three ultrasonic transducer stage in a tripod formation .
Previous attempts to lift such a large object have only been achieved with droplets of water and wire - like and planar object . Impressive as this new achiever is , the team ’s inquiry is still a work in progress . ” At the moment , we can only levitate the object at a fixed position in space,“saidAndrade . " In future work , we would like to develop new devices capable of levitating and manipulating large object in atmosphere . "
While this method ca n’t be used on anything mobile yet ( hoverboards , anyone ? ) , it could be used to cook materials too hot to touch , such as liquefied alloy , in space . That , in turn , sounds like some pretty interesting dinnertime conversation to us .
