Controlling large fires in buildings usually pose enormously difficult challenge. Picking up on a 200-year-old observation that electricity can affect the shape of flames, making flames bend, twist, turn, flicker and even extinguishing them out, researchers at Harvard University report that electric waves can be effective fire-fighting devices. Reporting at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Ludovico Cademartiri, the lead researcher, states that their “research has shown that by applying large electric fields we can suppress flames very rapidly”. Very little research had been done over the years on the phenomenon. Firefighters currently use… Login to continue

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