this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Are you saying novel mechanical engineering designs are impossible? That the mechanism of a leaf blower is so near perfection, that a well funded team of 4 mechanical engineering students could not, without VIOLATING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, have simply found a better mechanism?

I agree with your "show me the numbers" critique, but I find your complete disregard of what may be a better answer without any data at all to be equally foolhardy.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

He has a point though... OVERALL noise was only suppressed 2db. It's only 12db in a specific frequency. EVERY article has more or less ONLY stated the 12db value. It seems more and more these days that you just have to assume that the article headline is at best mostly false, or obscenely misleading.

2db overall... is kind of fucking pointless. I mean... as someone afflicted with hearing problems I know that every db matters. But all this hubbub for something that should just be found, then implemented without all this fanfare... the general public will not care about this, yet I've seen 3 articles on it for some reason.

And most normal people don't understand the logarithmic nature of the db scale anyway. Every 3 db is technically a doubling in power. But it takes 10db for our perception to halve/double.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Because leaf blowers are fucking annoying and we need hope

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Taking out the high-pitch whine will make them much more bearable. It's a student project, they did well. This isn't groundbreaking Noble-prize stuff, but it doesn't deserve all the hate it's getting here either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I did a student project for server room HVAC fans being annoying back in uni, targeted reduction in those annoying or peak frequencies was a totally acceptable outcome as to not disturb operators (was for a simulated patient in the attached hospital). I'm not an acoustic engineer, so obviously take what I'm saying with a grain of salt (did do a lot of safety and risk work though), making things less annoying is perfectly valid if they're not already harmful to your hearing in the first place.

What's cool to me is that it's just printable, so in theory super accessible and anyone could iterate on it if they desired (assuming it gets open sourced)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Agreed. Being in the house and having the shrill component of the blower removed would greatly be appreciated.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

but it doesn’t deserve all the hate it’s getting here either.

I'm not sure I said anything hateful here... I cited facts from the actual paper and described discontent with the articles, specifically the headlines.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The hate is for making a pretty obviously false claim about no power loss. Increasing or even decreasing the exhaust length will affect performance. So for them to add 8” and claim there is no loss of power is quite frankly an outright lie. So it’s being called out, and yet people are defending the asinine claim, it’s hilarious and very concerning as well.

People are also focusing on the wrong information, the total db was reduced by a paltry 2db, not 12db like what’s being talked about.

So they provide sound data that is misleading, and make a claim about power and not provide the data. This just reads marketing piece instead of anything on the actual tech.