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Students invent quieter leaf blower

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Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#73

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) beca…

I don't understand this, isn't most of the noise coming from the air and not the engine in the leaf blowers?

No. Nearly all of it is the engine.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#74

How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.

Exactly right. It's asinine to blow leaves. They don't do any damage and they create habitats for spiders and insects. I hate poeple who want clean, empty mowed lawns, aiming for an ideal that is far away from nature. Sickening.

Wet rotting leaves on a footpath are very slippery, so its helpful to be able to blow them off the footpath before they get all mushy

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#75
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you stumble on it. Other than that - leaf blowers are not used only in gardening work.

Yep, it's invaluable for getting your BBQ grill really going.

I use it to dry my car which is ceramic coated, one of the best tools I have recently purchased.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#76
post #10
post #6

Unfortunately the article is very poor on details. The sound from the video is insufficient to tell. Personally, I'd be quite excited to see what are the changes engineering wise. I bet it'd make a proper addition to BOLTR. I still can't see how it'd be much quieter, as lots of the noise is just the air moving (and making sound waves), perhaps less vibrations, different frequencies due to different rpm?

"Our product takes in a full blow of air and separates it," said team member Leen Alfaoury. "Some of that air comes out as it is, and part of it comes out shifted. The combination of these two sections of the air makes the blower less noisy." Sounds like they created a noise cancellation air channel.

There was a paper a few years ago describing something that sounds very similar: https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.02...

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. That’s an awfully uncharitable projection. The lawn business people I know would love to adopt full electric fleets of gear. They aren’t sending their teams out with gas engines because it’s a “fantasy escape world”. They d…

You are talking about people working in a business. I'm talking about neighbors living in rural/suburban areas. EDIT: We have a lawn care guy. He does our half acre in under 30 minutes. Our neighbors who do it themselves - same half acre size - typically take 90-120 minutes. They'll just sit on a riding mower and let it idle for minutes, while looking up stuff on their phones. Or let it idle and go inside for a drink…

There’s some overlap as well–I recently had an extended visit in my rural hometown, working by a window overlooking the main street. Something I noticed quickly was that a huge proportion of passing vehicles that happened to be loud enough for me to glance up were actually lawn service pickup trucks with loud, modified exhausts. It also became clear that I’ve been living in the city too long to remember how obnoxious the all-day-every-day drone of lawn equipment is, it sort of blew my mind.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#78

How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.

A canopy of unblown leaves can cause damage to the surfaces underneath through mold or mildew. In some cases, this damage can be effectively permanent if let go long enough.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#79

How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.

Agreed.

I saw a bumble bee come out of hibernation from inside an old leaf out in the garden recently. Amazing experience. The leaves also make good top soil.

If you need to move leaves, use brooms. Or leave the leaves be, assholes! :-D

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