Classical Radio Helps Green the Planet

Nashville, Apr. 1, 2009 —

Engineers at the Nissan plant in Nashville TN have made a unique discovery: they found that radio waves  can increase the fuel efficiency of their new Altima hybrids.  The radio waves work by setting up an oscillation of a razor-thin panel that was developed to keep the intake manifold from overheating,  reports the April edition of Living Green. 

The engineers created the panel out of a space age material — a very thin ceramic coating over a mat woven out of super thin aluminum wire.  The ceramic acts as an insulator to keep the manifold from overheating, but the aluminum mat is ultra flexible like fabric, and it picks up the oscillations from the car speaker system. Nissan engineer Ron Mathews explains that

just like telephone or optic cables carry signals, these multi-strand mats can carry multiple concurrent vibrations.  The oscillations travel through a small chamber in the manifold that amplifies them, and that creates air pressure — sort of like the pressure that works on your eardrum — and it atomizes the liquid gasoline into tiny drops inside the manifold. So the ratio of air to gasoline is greatly increased.  It’s a little like those salad spritzers that break up the oil into small droplets so you end up using less oil.

The engineers have been experimenting with different formats of radio waves.  Music works better than talk because the oscillation is steadier.  Classical music, it turns out, is the most efficient of all, because the music is made up of more continuous frequencies than rock music.  They postulate that the drum beats in rock music are too far apart to keep the oscillations steady.  Currently the radio waves travel through the Altima’s stereo system, but engineers are working on ways to channel vibrations directly into the manifold.

For now, when you drive your Altima, you should get better gas mileage when you play classical music on the radio.