- Published on
Rubens tube educational demo for STEM high school students
- Authors
- Name
- Ali Tarraf
- @alitarraf
This is the first test of the Ruben's flame tube I fabricated as part of a STEM education programs for kids. It is very easy to do, a lot of tutorials on you tube on how to make your own. Instead of displaying the usual standing waves, I had some fun trying out different songs I hooked up through an amplifier and speaker. This video is showing the flames acoustic response for the song Freak like me by Lee Walker.
Tips to build your own flame tube:
- Get a 1" or above steel pipe. In this example I am using a galvanized pipe which is not ideal because Zinc fumes are toxic. But the flame tube is run for couple of minutes briefly and the pipe is not heated enough to release any fumes. In case you want to run for longer periods of time choose an iron or steel pipe.
- Notice near the end of the video the high amplitude beats of the song tend to extinguish the flames near the speaker on the right. A better design will feature two inlet port for propane fuel in this case, one far from the speaker and one near the speaker.
- You can get a speaker and amplifier from junk computer speakers.