• Member
• April 18, 2024

Sound The unlimited, uncontaminated energy source by Madhukar Swayambhu

Sound – be it music or noise, a communication media, or a powerful tool to influence people, the biggest power of a successful orator, the key ingredient of entertainment industry’s success and reach, livelihood for the RJ’s and all global radio telecast, master source of communication with the satellites and space missions as (through they are just waves, not termed as sound waves because Sound doesn’t travel in vacuum), or at an emotional plane, the first words of the child, or those three magical words for lovers or a piece of advice from dad or mom. It’s a universe in itself.

We experience it, use it, communicate through it across the globe and even in the outer space, but often we don’t perceive as the source of energy. We have tapped the power of solar, wind, sea waves, hydro power, or even fossil fuels like coal and oil, for energy production. But we’ve never considered the most powerful and the most ancient source of energy in the universe – the Sound.

Let’s tap the possibility today in this blog.

Understanding Sound

We’ve heard of glass shattering performances of ace opera singers. There are legends describing Tansen, the expert vocalist in Akbar’s court (16^th century), could light lamps or attract rains through the power of his singing. We are even aware of a raag in Hindustani vocal known as meghmalhar, which is sung during monsoon or rains.

We’ve all done the basic tong experiments in VII-IX standard, even if the +2 subjects were not science, but commerce or arts. May be in the NEP 2020, the gen Z or the millennials would be doing it even earlier in their life. The tong vibrates when hit against a surface. These vibrations can be heard through the air from some distance. The same could be experienced in the wired musical instruments like a guitar or a sitar or a santoor or a veena. So, what’s happening here?

The vibrations are creating waves, mechanical waves to be very precise. These mechanical waves are travelling through the medium, which is air in this case. Wave moves in oscillations, moving between the highest and the lowest peaks, and in this movement the medium is displaced. Thus, the medium naturally becomes a storage for both potential and kinetic energy, generated due to propagation of the wave through the medium.

Now this energy in the medium can be tapped for the energy requirements for transportation, levitation, even moving a turbine for production of electricity or for any other energy usage, from light a bulb to flying an aircraft.

Sound Philosophy

Venturing in to Indian philosophy through the available scriptures, the Sound is also known as “Naad” in Sanskrit, which is the language of all Indian Scriptures of the Indian Knowledge System (IKS). Here we have a huge importance attached to Naad. In fact, even the description of origin of the origin itself, or the universe or the being or the nature, is from Naad.

What western though process calls as a “big bang”, the Vaidic philosophy goes a bit before and beyond to establish the reasoning behind the “bang” which is described as “Naad”. The Rigved describes that “before nature, nothing existed” it all started with a “Naad”, which is called the “Naad Brahma”, which can be translated as the “Sound of existence” for the sake of better understanding.

All Vaidic mantras are working on the same science that each word has its own vibrations, and using these vibrations as the source of energy, one can impact the aura of life, which in turn impacts the being resulting into elevation towards the higher levels of consciousness. Thus, the sound gets divided into two forms here – Aahat Naad and Anahata Naad. Aahat Naad is the one that gets generated when two surfaces or two particles collide and sound gets created which is the most common way to produce any sound, while Anahata Naad is the one that’s generated without any kind of collision.

All eastern philosophies have experimented and explore the facets of sound. Like in Guru Nanak Dev gave the concept of “Ik Omkar” as the “ultimate truth” in his teachings, which can be translated into the “sound of being or existence”, which is somewhat similar to “Naad Brama”.

Similarly in Buddhist philosophy, under aegis of Soka Gakkai they chant a mantra for inner awakening which is “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo”. Again, using sound to elevate or levitate the being of humans, as a part of meditation.

Sound Experiments

There are many experiments happening on tapping this enormous energy source, some of them are cited here -

1.       In the International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering, ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 10, October 2012, a paper was published by Shalabh Rakesh Bhatnagar from Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur, which described and experiment on “Converting Sound Energy to Electric Energy using piezo electric crystal material, to capture the noise pollution of the cities to be converted in to electrical energy”. The paper described three different methods at a laboratory level to be utilized for generating electrical energy using sound energy as the key input.

2.       In January, 2021, Eman Anwar, Haneen Ahmed, Tasneem Yousif, and Mariam Mohamed, from Cairo, Egypt, got their paper published on reserachgate.net, titled Electric Energy from Sound Energy. They created a prototype and generated a few watts of electricity through their device prototype.

3.       A more recent paper was published in Annals of Mathematics & Physics, ISSN2689-7636, on 4th October, 2022, by Mervin A Boco, from Philippines, titled Sound Energy Harvesting and Converting Electricity (SEHCE), which also focused upon making a device to capture sound and convert it into electricity.

Conclusion

If there’s a proper focus and funding made available in this domain, probably a lot of free-flowing energy can be tapped and a huge energy crisis could be solved for the world, without any emissions or heat generated in the process. It’s just a matter of channelizing the free energy and making it a strength instead of a wasted opportunity.