Seattle Students Create Awesome Plasma Speaker, You Can, Too

The group of students from seattle use superlatives describing the speaker, and it is in fact quite fitting. I am pretty much astonished by the pure awesomeness of the speaker they've put together, and thanks to them, you can make one yourself. It can't compete with regular speakers, but it's a good mile ahead in coolness factor.

The students are proud of what they have done—“No instructives. We used basic knowledge,” says a student in a StudentRND video. At the same time, they are straightforward about the speaker’s limits. “Compared to a normal speaker, this is not very efficient. The actual power usage is less than a halogen lamp, however.”

The more watts, the clearer and louder the sounds. But the more watts, the hotter the speaker gets. The goal has been to work up a design that consumes between 25 to 50 watts. The students also issue a warning that they will not be responsible for any disasters. Keep all bodily parts away from the speakers, they warn. “Plasma speakers are dangerous.”

Source: Pledgers step up for rad, cool plasma speakers

The fact that they're dangerous makes them more manly, I for one will definitely try to make one of these. Here are a couple of videos for your enjoyment.



A demonstration playing Super Mario Bros Theme Song:



Thanks to miniatus, for providing a very good supplemental example (can also be seen further down):



I'm glad we have students that apply science to create such cool and fun stuff. Science doesn't always have to be practical, and I think this is a good reminder of that. I have to say these clips were quite uplifting as well. Don't you agree?

Cool stuff
Imagine the plasma light shows that could be generated! Of course high above the crowd so that no one gets zapped!
How much clearer can clearer audio get anyway? Also, would this tech be super expensive?
A speaker that could be used as a weapon? Don't know how well this will take off, but fascinating none the less.

spec

I believe the difference between a microphone and a speaker is the direction of the current. If they changed that and had the plasma speaker hooked up to another speaker, could they talk into it?

kinda lame copy of .... many other copies.

Still the tech is cool
www.youtube.com...

bigger

Originally posted by speculativeoptimist
Imagine the plasma light shows that could be generated!
spec

Fantastic idea! I got a feeling of excitement before my brain even made sense of that sentence. It would be quite dangerous though, and I don't know how many watts would be needed for something like that. The heat must be pretty high anyway, I believe.

Originally posted by satron
I believe the difference between a microphone and a speaker is the direction of the current. If they changed that and had the plasma speaker hooked up to another speaker, could they talk into it?

Good question. But sadly, I'm not qualified to answer that question.

Originally posted by FriendlyGopher

Still the tech is cool

You got that right!

reply to post by Droogie


Thanks for posting this up thats pretty cool. I'm going to try and stop by there the next time I'm in Seattle.

This is one I saw a while back, posted back in 2008 .. pretty nifty .. this one seems to be a bit clearer, but obviously a much larger effort by the looks of it.

Originally posted by Silverado292
Thanks for posting this up thats pretty cool.

My pleasure.

I'm going to try and stop by there the next time I'm in Seattle.

I hope you do! Be sure to bring a camera, you might get a cool scoop to post here on ATS!

Originally posted by miniatus
This is one I saw a while back, posted back in 2008 .. pretty nifty .. this one seems to be a bit clearer, but obviously a much larger effort by the looks of it.

edit on 22-8-2011 by miniatus because: (no reason given)

I saw that while browsing youtube when checking out the videos in the OP. I'm glad you posted it, because it shows much clearer what it's capable of.

Originally posted by satron
I believe the difference between a microphone and a speaker is the direction of the current. If they changed that and had the plasma speaker hooked up to another speaker, could they talk into it?

Well with a normal microphone, the power needed to send the electric signal is so small, it is generated by noise.

A speaker require amplification in order to generate the power output, and

this! Is using that much energy to produce the sound, you'd never use it as a microphone.

Unless you could shoot electricity out of your mouth!!

reply to post by Droogie


Hey Droogie,

That is epic!
Thats the kind of thing that gets people interested, thinking and hooked.

Thanks for sharing that.

Originally posted by soundofathousandbirds
Thats the kind of thing that gets people interested, thinking and hooked.

I completely agree. I think kids nowadays needs too see the more of the "useless" and fun applications of science to get into it. Altough, this example is pretty dangerous for kids to play around with, so I wouldn't try to engage younger kids by showing this particular experiment. But if I saw this when I was a whole bit younger, I might have chosen a different path entirely.

This is known for more than hundred years. Firs singing arc was build in 1900r
en.wikipedia.org...

by William Duddell
en.wikipedia.org...

This kind of speakers are producing very sharp sound and they can't generate low frequencies so invention however interesting was never introduced to mas production. Some japan hi-fi companies made some short series of such high frequencies speakers as a part of luxurious audio set but it was never popular.