Dewars, rowers, and car boots: Three new ways to make hearing protectors.
A dewar, like the kind they store liquid helium in, also isolates from vibration. You might think of a dewar as a mirror-y insulative thermos liner. So, what if you made coconut cup mirror-y-thermos liners and put them over your ears like headphones? Basically zero vibration striking the outside of the coconut cups makes its way past the vacuum of the dewars. In real life this could be cheap and robust at overear headphones because cheap plastic dewars, mirrorless, glassless, themoses are now normal, Just do that to the overear headphones with similar polymer materials.
Think of a cylindrical foam squishy earplug; what if it had minute rows of oars extending from it, perhaps under tension so that when pushed by sound the F=MA force would actually deflect to the sides, away from the middle channel. If you could deflect all of the sound away from the middle towards the tube sides no energy would read the eardrum and the it would protect hearing. _\_ >>>>>
Now I've seen silicone =====))=))=))=) earplugs that look like they kind of have rowers. I might be mistaken, at silicone earplugs they might be "spring loaded plenums" not rowers and I mean F=MA diverting side struts.
At a roll up squishy foam earplug rowers are possible too, really just toss some ridges on there. I think they are still cheap enough to be disposable.
I saw a thing about how they immobilize parked cars in England, I think it might be called a "boot". It attaches to the front wheel keeping the car from moving. (In the US we just tow). What if you made something so medically mild it could dare to touch the eardrum itself, immobilizing it. Zero vibration at the eardrum then translates to no transmitted sound and better hearing protection.
EarBoot procedure: put a drop of fluid in each ear, then put in regular feeling squishy earplugs:
I think there could be a cheap polymer that turns from liquid to solid with light, and when the light was turned off turns back to liquid or very very flimsy jello. Put a battery and a laser diode in a squishy cylindrical earplug, then have the light shine into the ear canal onto the eardrum. The eardrop fluid turns solid all over the back of the ear. If the battery fails or you take the squishy plug out the droplet of fluid goes back to being fluid. If you like for full removal it makes jello that adheres to the squishy earplug.-- beanangel, Dec 20 2020 From the title, we thought this would be hearing protection specifically designed for James T. Kirk, who is renowned for having three ears.-- 8th of 7, Dec 20 2020 Of course you have; the left ear, the right ear, and the final front ear...-- 8th of 7, Dec 21 2020 It was the very least we could do (a quantity we specialse in).-- 8th of 7, Dec 21 2020 That joke was unbelievable. I got a hint of an image of when some MIT scientists grew an ear on the back of a mouse though and it made the news.-- beanangel, Dec 21 2020 What, the ear became a journalist ? That's one clever pinna ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 21 2020 Side rowers? My gut feeling says futuristic, a deep learning AI design solution for a molecular architecture energy problem.
Silence in space, a winner.
Oobleck, what's not to like? Easily washes out in silence.-- wjt, Dec 22 2020 Nice poetry! and it seems like a poem for each of the latter two items.
Mirrored cups protect my hearing
At some porn I'll soon be leering
The headphone feature's now appearing
acoustic emitting
music permitting
Headphones at the store.
...ok, um,
Noise reflects off of my head
Cause I spent a lot of bread
Mirrored cups are appearing
They say that they'll protect my hearing
laying stylish near my earring
hmmmm...
Dewar, thinker, be-er seer
and I say, a rare agreer
If you wear these cups of Gold
You'll hear well when getting old.-- beanangel, Dec 22 2020 [beanangel]; that's not bad. You should do all of your ideas in rhyme, might improve the readability...-- neutrinos_shadow, Dec 23 2020 ... though not the actual content.-- 8th of 7, Dec 23 2020 random, halfbakery