Can a Sound Mill Harness the Power of Sound Waves?

[Amroth]

*please move if in wrong forum*

Im taking the IB at a school in New York and every 11th grader has to do a project called Einstein on the Beach. It involves creating your own project and doing it on the beach that the school will travel to on a day trip. I am trying to come up with a good project and I was wondering. Is it possible to create some sort of 'sound mill'? Sort of like a water mill, just that it reacts to sound waves? I was thinking maybe it would work if one could polarize them, but then i realized that they are longitudinal, not transverse. Is there possibilities in this project?

Thanks,
-Lars

 

[Danger]

Since sound consists of pressure waves, it can certainly be harnessed to do work. That, after all, is what a microphone does. If you specifically mean to have some kind of vanes or paddles that turn because of it, I think that you and all of your classmates would be deafened long before the sound reached a high enough level to move anything like that. You can maximize whatever effect you do get by funnelling the sound as with the 'horn' on the original mechanical recording devices.

 

[Amroth]

So basically there's no way i could arrange this without ending up deaf and with bleeding ears..? Couldn't there be some way to isolate the sounds waves?

 

[GOD__AM]

You could take a boombox and an automatic wristwatch that has stopped, place the watch over the speakers and rock out till the watch starts?

 

[Ouabache]

Speaking of mills

Since you'll be on the beach anyway.. How about an experiment with a light mill ? (http://www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.uk/crooks_radiometer_and_otheoscope.htm )

I've always been fascinated putting one of these in sunshine and watching the paddle spin at full tilt. Hmmmm I wonder if we can measure the efficiency of energy conversion, from solar to mechanical, for one of these.

 

[Mk]

So how does it work? Wikipedia doesn't say anything about it.

 

[Ouabache]

So how does it work? Wikipedia doesn't say anything about it.

If you're referring to Crooke's Radiometer I mentioned, look at explanations 3 and 4 at the following link http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/C/Cr/Crookes_radiometer.htm

 

[Amroth]

Wow, the light mill sounds very interesting. Maybe i should try something like that, because it does not seem like the sound mill will be that easy to make work...