Teen repellent wins Ig Nobel honour
For little more than the price of an Eminem-style designer outfit, parents will soon be able to operate an electronic teenage repellent, invented by Howard Stapleton, an engineer from Wales.
His device, called the Mosquito, operates like a dog whistle and disperses gangs of loitering teenagers by emitting a piercing shriek only they can hear. It has won him an award from Harvard University.
The Mosquito exploits an ageing effect that sees our ability to hear high frequency sounds diminish as we get older. During teenage years we can hear high frequency sounds above 20kHZ but this drops to below 18kHZ with age.
“We discovered that, even at relatively low volumes, the right frequency noise would only be heard by 25s and below and it was highly annoying after five minutes,” Mr Stapleton said.
Mr Stapleton, of Compound Security Systems in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, yesterday received the 2006 Ig Nobel award.
The Ig Nobels celebrate the quirkier side of scientific endeavour, according to founder Marc Abrahams, honouring “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think”.
Tests of the €850 device at a shop in Barry, south Wales, last year, were a huge success when teenagers who congregated outside the premises pleaded with the owner, Robert Gough, to turn it off.
Older customers were oblivious to the high-pitched shriek.
A second Ig Nobel went to US scientists for work on why fingernails dragged along a blackboard produces an excruciating sound. The study, entitled Psychoacousitics of Chilling Sound, found the noise topped the list of annoying sounds but it failed to explain why.
Also honoured was Ivan Schwab, of the University of California, who received the ornithology prize for his study of how woodpeckers avoid headaches. His research showed that a woodpecker’s skull and brain are uniquely arranged to make its head function like a perfect shock absorber.
