Airplanes are a technical marvel , give humans the office of flight and letting us locomote huge distances in a matter of hours . But they can also be vulgar . With rows upon rows of the great unwashed squeeze into cramp fanny , it ’s hard not to imagine the clouds of germ that could be circulating throughout the cabin .
luckily , 17 - year - sure-enough Raymond Wang has a result . The teenage scientist created a minor twist that he says could increase fresh air breathing in on airplanes by as much as 190 percentage .
In a late TED Talk , Wang explained that each clock time a somebody sneezes on an aeroplane , that sneezing circle the intact airplane cabin before being filtered out by vent on the sides of the plane . Essentially , a single sneeze can end up flow past several rows of masses , all of whom are potentially inhale its pathogens .
To puzzle out that trouble , Wang came up with a tiny rooter that controls air flow , pushing old air towards the sheet ’s filtration system or else of letting it circulate the cabin . plane could be outfitted with rows of these machine , Wang explains , make “ walls of melodic line ” that separate passengers , take into account for “ personalized external respiration zones . ”
Wang ’s machine — which took home the top dirty money at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair — has yet to be essay on actual airplanes . accord toThe Washington Post , he estimates that instal the technology would cost $ 1000 per plane . “ I did n’t have the money to go out and buy a woodworking plane , so I decided to build a data processor [ pretence ] rather , ” he explains . Nevertheless , Wang ’s idea draws upon hard data pulled from existing reports and his own three - dimensional simulations .
The young scientist believes the machine has implication that go beyond avoiding mundane seed or catching a cold . Serious disease can be spread via plane — Wang refer one instance in which a man carrying the H1N1 virus taint 17 people during a undivided sheet ride — and Wang hope his gadget might even facilitate preclude future epidemics .
[ h / t : Independent ]
