It took 150 years to re-open this?
In 1857, Irish scientist John Tyndall recognized that sound waves could extinguish flames. Now, scientists hope that phenomena could lead to the development of new fire extinguishers that would be useful, say, in a spacecraft or terrestrially to avoid water damage from sprinklers. First though, they need to figure out why exactly sound can snuff fire. Most likely, the sound wave causes a drop in pressure that extinguishes the flame. From Scientific American:
In 2004 Dmitriy Plaks and several of his fellow students at the University of West Georgia tested whether sound waves can douse fires in hopes of using sound to extinguish flames in a spacecraft. They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback’s “How you remind me” was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out, according to results published in 2005 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
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[From Sound waves snuff fire]
This could be useful. I still think my idea of dropping dry ice into forest fires deserves a try (the intense cold and the sudden appearance of non-flammable CO2 would take away two of the three things a fire needs — heat and oxygen). My guess is the sound solution might not be as effective in an open space or one with odd angles or reflective surfaces (like a forest). And surely figuring out the note in question would be trivial.
Imagine a fire extinguisher that is more like an airhorn than the usual fountain type, especially in a kitchen: what a great improvement that would be.