Preempting Hailstone Formation To Protect Cars 393
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."
Sonic cannons are useless technology (Score:3, Funny)
Actually... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually... (Score:4, Funny)
Forget hail; imagine opeating this horizontally! Take out the neighborhood, open up some scenic views.
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
sound fishy to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds to me like these guys got taken. It's pretty hard to prove that you prevented hail, just as it is hard to prove that you created rain.
as proof (Score:4, Informative)
[blockquote]Basically, the anti-hail cannon uses
acetylene to shoot cations into the
atmosphere at sonic speed, which creates
shock waves that interfere with the
crystallization of ice, thereby resulting in
rain or sheet, but not hail. It covers a
circular area of about 0.3 mile radius,
roughly 200 acres.[/blockquote]
This sounds like a bunch of baloney to me. "Shoots cations" is as ridiculous as when you hear hippies talking about "bad ions" and "good ions" with respect to some stupid lava lamp.
Re:as proof (Score:2, Insightful)
skepticism is fine, you just have to use more proof than "this sounds like a bunch of baloney". cations are real you know.
Re:as proof (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, but unlike 'good ions', cation has a proper scientific meaning. Cations are simply positively charged ions. As they're charged they're fairly easy to direct using magnetic fields and *waves hands* what-not. An example is a helium nucleus, which has a charge of +2, also known as alpha-radiation. So, some smoke detectors work by 'shooting cations' across a small gap.
Of course, the problem with this is that alpha-radiation is stopped by a few centimetres of air, and larger particles are probably even less effective. I've no idea if they actually 'shoot cations' thousands of feet into the air or not - it seems more likely that a large charge would propagate through the air, without any individual particle travelling very far, if they could produce enough of a potential difference.
I wouldn't say it's baloney but it does sound somewhat exaggerated.
Re:as proof (Score:2)
Re:as proof (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmmm. Hang on - lightning occurs when there is a great potential difference between the cloud and the earth, right? So as the cloud is getting ready to shoot negatively-charged particles downwards could you shoot positively-charged ions upwards?
To answer my own question, I think there'd be a great risk of triggering a lightning strike by doing this, so you're probably right :)
Re:as proof (Score:5, Informative)
As an aside, lightning is generally believed to occur due to charge separation inside the storm due to cloud microphysics, with positive charge accumulating near the ground, possibly partly due to friction from rain. What actually triggers the lightning strike is unknown, though one theory that has recently been gaining some traction proposes that cosmic rays cause a sudden breakdown in the electrical resistance of air which rapidly snowballs (over the course of a fraction of a second), allowing lightning to occur. Obviously things are a bit more complicated than that, but it's way O/T to get into the nitty-gritty details, which I'm not overly familiar with anyway since I haven't read the papers detailing said theory.
no, no, you got it all wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Re:as proof (Score:5, Informative)
This irritated me so much I looked it up. From HailShield.com [hailshield.com]:
and
So there we have it. They do move cations into the atmosphere, but they don't shoot them out of the cannon.
Re:as proof (Score:3, Interesting)
(No offense to any 5 year olds that may be reading.)
Re:as proof (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, it was the U.S. Navy that first noticed that a negative charge on the air has positive effects on crew health and morale. This was observed in submerged nuclear subs where external environment effects are well controlled due to being submerged for long periods.
It is thought that the morale destroying effects of 'the doldrums' reported historically are in part caused by the generally positive charge on the air. That's much harder to prove sine it could also be the general lack of wind (and thus progress on the voyage).
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm assuming that the sonic pulse is supposed to somehow agitate the falling water to keep it from forming large ice crystals so they melt once they get to the lower (and warmer) atmosphere. Or something like that. I'm too lazy to read too deeply into the company's website.
Either way, they claim a 100% success rate, and if Nissan is willing to buy t
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:5, Informative)
Hail forms when a raindrop freezes inside a cloud, but shoots back up (due to massive updrafts), and falls back down, gaining more layers of frozen rain/ice. It continues this cycle until the ball of ice is too heavy to be lifted by the updrafts, at which point it falls to the ground as hail.
Re:A small hail-free patch (photo) (Score:5, Insightful)
Other pages on the site have:
* inconsistent information (every 5.5 seconds; every 6 seconds; every 5 seconds; the noise level is listed at various levels, too...)
* dubious statements like "supersonic explosions do not affect animals"
* incorrect spelling and punctuation
* overuse of jargon and jargon-y words (such as "ascending thermionic explosions"). Looking at this web site, I got the feeling that they did not want me to understand how it works, they just want me to be impressed.
* Worst of all: statistics! Why do they start the noise level measurements 50m away? Are you not supposed to go closer than 50m while it's operating? What if you install this on the roof of your car?
Of course, they don't have to explain their patented super-invention to me. But if they are going to deliberately withhold information, they could have been less patronizing about it! Overall, the site seems to have a very low level of professionalism. To whatever degree this reflects on the device itself, it reflects poorly.
zach
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the BIRDS that you'll be smelling...
The ones that aren't killed, will surely dump a load on the roadway.
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:3, Insightful)
120db is the sound measured on the ground next to the device. The sound is almost certainly focused upwards, which means it will be significantly louder above the device. As for the cloud absorbing the sound, well that's how it works.
Re:sound fishy to me (Score:5, Interesting)
When I spent my summers as a kid in italy on the farm when ever it looked like hail I would hear a booming sound like cannons. My mother told me it was the cannons that they fired into the clouds to stop the hail from knocking the grapes off the vines.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the book 'the skunk works', one of the pilots in the stealth fighters in the first Bush gulf war describes how before the war began they used to go to their hangars in the morning and find the planes surrounded by dead bats.
There were a lot of bats in the area, and the design of the fighters meant they not only didnt reflect radar, they didnt reflect sound. So these bats would be swooping around what sounded like an empty hangar, when suddenly they'd run into an invisible force field that would injure or kill them...
bats (Score:3, Insightful)
Link to the probable manufacturer... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to the probable manufacturer... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, you're replacing your insurance policies with their warranty. Depending on the reliability of their financial resources & how much these sound cannons cost, this could actually save money for Nissan even if it doesn't work (as I assume).
They forgot to mention the downside... (Score:5, Funny)
News? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:News? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've actually found it to be one of the more interesting articles on
Can you hear the things from where you are? Do they have much of an impact/annoyance-factor for people living in the surrounding areas?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Batlow Australia (Score:5, Funny)
An early version of the device (Score:5, Funny)
Re:An early version of the device (Score:2)
Worse than hail (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Worse than hail (Score:4, Funny)
Environmental Impact? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:5, Funny)
What's that you say? I can't hear you!
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:2)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. This thing makes noises in a way yet unprecedented. It may very well interfere with bird flight routes or many other things. Just sucking your thumb is no way to dismiss a possible enironmental impact.
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:2, Interesting)
Water is a much better medium than air for propagating sound. That's why the whales get driven mad by certain sonar systems. The effects of these hail-preventers would be localised.
I'd be interested to know what the effects on local birds are, although I'd imagine they don't hang around underneath a cloud that's about to lash down golf-ball sized hail...
They forgot to mention... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh boy. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
And now the bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like it's worse than living next to an airport.
needs more linkage (Score:5, Informative)
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Earth_Sciences/Meteo
http://www.weathermod.com/projects/hail/argentina
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/wxmod.html [ametsoc.org]
Hasn't think been around for a while? (Score:2, Interesting)
Some horticulturalists have even been known to fly helicopters above their crops over night to stop frost from forming.
Works great, (Score:2)
Sonic waves? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sonic waves? (Score:3, Funny)
Hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
And would need to cover 140 acres, which is the size of the parking lot...
Re:Hilarious (Score:2)
It's probably still cheaper than covering it in hundreds of thousands of cars.
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Blue Ice (Score:2)
affects birds? (Score:2)
What a Crock (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, hailstones of the size they're concerned with usually form miles from the location they actually fall in, and are held aloft for substantial periods of time--sometimes longer than an hour. Eventually, however, the updraft in the storm will weaken or reposition itself, and when it does, look out below. So even assuming this device could prevent hail from forming within a 1-mile radius of itself, your stuff is still gonna get the crap beat out of it anyway.
Whether the guy that sold them on this was a meteorologist or not, this sort of crockery is what gives meteorologists a bad name.
Pegging the needle on the BS-ometer (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree completely. Reading about this system made me marvel at the salesmanship involved. You'd think anyone past high school would recognize such obvious pseudoscience, but I guess the saying about fools being born every minute is a great truism. People don't realize how rare hail damage is, statistically, and so they can be led to believe that systems like this work, when it's just very likely that hail hasn't fallen on that 100-acre plot of land in the last three years because, well, hail wasn't going to fall there in the first place.
Unless Nissan got a better deal, even the company's guarantee [hailstop.qc.ca] is worthless, viz.:
So, even if hundreds of acres of cars are hail-damaged while the system is in use (after the 20-minute warmup period), the company is only liable for the cost of the "hail suppression system", minus $5000! However, you have to pay, either directly or via a service contract, for an annual inspection to keep the 3-year warrranty in force--price undisclosed.
The only way this makes any economic sense for Nissan is if they got the system for free, so that the shyster company can use them as a showcase customer, for the publicity value. Even then, you'd think the public embarassment at being associated with such a scam would be intolerable.
The whole thing reminds me of the story about the guy jumping up and down in the middle of the street, blowing a whistle. Someone walks up and says,
"Why are you blowing the whistle?"
"To scare the elephants away."
"Elephants? There are no elephants around here!"
"See? It's working!"
Re:What a Crock (Score:3, Insightful)
Well...it may be counterintuitive, but it probably isn't safe to write it off without a test. Perhaps the shock waves generated are tuned somehow to be particularly effective at disrupting hail.
My area of exp
Re:What a Crock (Score:4, Informative)
That doesn't mean the system actually works, since damaging hail is very rare, even in the most hail-prone locations. Earlier incarnations of "hail cannons" have been around since the 1800s, when they shot random garbage skyward into thunderstorms...so ironically, whether or not the storm actually did anything, they were guaranteed a hail of trash (often nuts/bolts, things of that nature which were actually quite dangerous).
Unless Nissan uses Rust-O-Leum to paint their cars, in my experience you need severe hail (defined by the National Weather Service as 0.75" in diameter) at the very *least* to do anything to the paint job of an automobile. I've never seen hail less than about 1 1/2" leave any visible mark on a car, and I've seen plenty of hail. If I had just brought a brand-new Mercedes, I would have no problems with driving it through a hailstorm with a maximum hail size of 1". It sounds really bad when it's hitting your car, but doesn't do anything.
I can understand the use for crops (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong. We got one of those car parks in the dock area here and it is huge but it wouldn't need to be a complex roof and its success would be 100%. Also stops sunlight and seagull shit and acid rain.
So nice story, didn't know this was even possible but Nissan probably got had. Will be intresting to hear what their neighbours will have to say about it. Noise polution in a 5 mile area? Never be allowed over here. Here people complain they can hear the trains in the house they bought that is next the rail track.
Re:I can understand the use for crops (Score:3, Interesting)
Farmers carry insurance for that protection. Seems like a better idea to me, we grow far more crops than we need, so let insurance cover the small amount that are destroyed, and leave the weather alone.
Remember when car were going to save the cities from pollution? Of course not, because that was about 100 years ago, but back about 1900 cars were welcomed in many cities because they didn't leave droppings all over the streets. Of course today we know about the droppings they leave all over the air...
So presumably... (Score:2)
I still don't get it. (Score:3, Funny)
Avianic Death Rays (Score:2)
Will the Sonic Booms... (Score:5, Funny)
Nissan today announces... (Score:4, Funny)
However, they system's "sonic boom" has broken millions of dollars in windows.
-Grump
I had a hail damaged Ford Falcon (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:I had a hail damaged Ford Falcon (Score:2, Funny)
Homer: [suspicious] Hey, what are all these holes?
Salesman: [quickly] These are speed holes. They make the car go faster.
Homer: Oh, yeah. Speed holes!
[bullets riddle the car and smash the windshield]
Salesman: You want my advice? I think you should buy this car.
Gotta love snpp [snpp.com]!
Re:I had a hail damaged Ford Falcon (Score:3, Interesting)
German Sound Weapons in WWII (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, this one required a targetted infantryman to remain in place for more than half a minute, but the idea is probably similar.
Uh, roof? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus.
Re:Uh, roof? (Score:4, Funny)
Think different, people!
If only... (Score:2, Funny)
Daimler's hail protection for Mercedes (Score:5, Informative)
Daimler also have hail protection for their large car park of brand new Mercedes cars at Sindelfingen (by Stuttgart), but they don't use sonic booms. They have two Cessna pilots on standby, who will fly up and ionise the clouds or something like that, which stops the hail from forming. It seems to work well, too.
-- Steve
How hail forms and why this won't work (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a professor of meteorology. If one of my students had written that drivel I would have flunked 'em!
The microphysics of clouds is very complex. I'd really like to know what mechanism they really are trying to stifle here. Here is a bit on how hail forms. First, some background:
In a rapidly growing cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) cloud, you have a strong updraft (air rising rapidly). This air is contains humid air, which condenses to form liquid cloud droplets as it cools (rising air expands and cools - basic thermodynamics). It is indeed true that cloud droplets condense upon pieces of dust/salt/gunk in the atmosphere, but ionization has very very little to do with it. Many of these so-called condensation nuclei are not ionized. Water will condense upon just about anything if cooled enough.
Eventually this rising, cloudy air reaches heights where temperatures are well below freezing - say -20 degrees C. Water actually does not have to freeze when it is below 0 degrees C, and in fact what leads to lots of hail is the fact that there is an abundance of supercooled (below freezing liquid) cloud droplets in this cloud.
Eventually some ice crystals form, either spontaneously (supercooled cloud droplets freeze at about -40 degrees C - this is called homogeneous nucleation of ice), or because they come in contact with an ice nucleus (something that has a similar crystal structure to water ice). These ice crystals fall and co-mingle with the supercooled cloud droplets. Due to the difference in saturation vapor pressures over ice and water at a given temperature, these ice crystals grow and grow at the expense of the cloud droplets without actually making physical contact!
Now the stage is set for hail. There is an abundance of supercooled cloud droplets, which freeze upon contact with ice crystals. Contact is made, and graupel is formed. Graupel is kind of an intermediate form of ice between snow and hail. The updraft of the storm keeps everything going, and in fact can suspend heavy hail particles for a while before they either become so heavy they fall through the updraft, or they are tossed horizontally to a part of the storm where they fall to the ground. The largest hailstones form with the strongest updrafts because the hail can acrete lots and lots of supercooled water (hail will melt and refreeze also as it rises and falls within the cloud).
Again, I simply cannot fathom what process they are trying to stifle with these sound waves. Hail suppression research has focused mainly on seeding clouds with silver iodide. Silver iodide is a powdery substance which has an ice crystal shape very similar to that of water ice. Overseeding a cloud with AgI, so the theory goes, will convert all that supercooled cloud water into small ice crystals, scavenging all the liquid so there won't be any "lucky" graupel particles growing to the size of hail stones.
The Russians claimed some success with this process during the cold war (launching AgI laced rockets into clouds) but frankly I think they were overstating their success. Hail suppression work reached its peak in the 70's but because of the lack of any real statistical success, funding for this kind of work has pretty much dried up.
Anyway, a sucker is born every minute.
Leigh Orf
Abandoning scientific theories, on the other hand- (Score:3, Insightful)
Disproving good hard science takes a bit longer. Not just because of the effort involved, but because of the inertia of supposedly rational scientific thinkers -- just ask Barry Marshall [tallpoppies.net.au]:
But what happens after you drive off the lot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dangerous Precident (Score:3, Interesting)
while *we* may have no use for them, they are part of nature, and do play a part in what goes on.
Once we start screwing with the 'way of things', we are just asking for troubles we cant even foresee as of yet.
And not I'm not a 'tree hugger', I just worry about the caviler attitude, ' well if we don't like it, today, we will just change nature to suit us'....
Just look at the great dustbowl in the Midwest US if you don't think our seemingly unimportant actions can have drastic effects decades later...
Re:Dangerous Precident (Score:5, Insightful)
And you think it doesn't work? How'd they sell 400 of the things? When's the last time you saw an apple with hail damage? Did you think it had just stopped hailing?
As for changing nature, sweet jeebus, we're humans we change nature to suit us all the time, or did you think crops just naturally formed in large patches of ground? You're surfing the net, if you have a CRT monitor you have electrons shooting out into your face right now. Did you think that someone just found it on the beach?
The basic principle is that nature is not as fragile as it's portrayed. I don't think shooting a couple of shock waves into the air is going to cause any irreparable damage, and if we didn't screw with nature occasionally we would still be sitting in caves, eating berries and grubs.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
I know! Let's dub the thing the 'W.C. Field(s) Generator!'
I think I'll go take my meds now...
One step closer to the Thompson Harmonizer! (Score:3, Interesting)
Eric
[The subject line is a reference to the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, in which the U.S. government publicly announces the existence of the said machine, and all the wonderful benefits it will have, when in fact it is a weapon which can only cause destruction within the U.S.]
Gotta be kidding... (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps metal shielding on a conveyor system to be pulled over would be much better to deal with. Maybe more expensive, but this is fucking ridiculous.
Re:Altering Weather... Great! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Altering Weather... Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it's going to become much of a problem, either. With these things generating a 120db noise every 5 seconds, you're not going to see too many of them in populated areas - as the article says, they're mostly used by farmers to protect their fields.
That said, I'm really curious if it even works.
Re:Altering Weather... Great! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Altering Weather... Great! (Score:2, Troll)
Natural [skepdic.com], like a bearded pope, or pedophilia?
Sorry to break it to you, but daily we change natural processes on this planet. Chaging hail to snow or water sounds like a great idea to me.
Re:Altering Weather... Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything, this is good for the environment, as it reduces the number of cars destroyed every year by hail, therefore reducing needless manufacturing of replacement parts and reducing the amount ending up as scrap metal.
Besides, just
Re:Won't that be dangerous... (Score:2)
GAAAA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Won't that be dangerous... (Score:3, Funny)
Nissan don't have them fitted to cars yet
Your thinking of a Volkswagon Golf
:-)
Re:Holy Shit. Crowd-control, anyone? (Score:2)
Well I've seen better
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)