The forensic investigation could lead to safer drinking water

Ping! The popular 1990 film, The Hunt for Red October, helped introduce sonar technology on submarines to pop culture. Nearly 30 years later, a team of scientists from the University of Missouri is taking inspiration from this same sonar technology to develop a quick and inexpensive way to determine if drinking water is safe for drinking. On the basis of their results, the scientists said they could determine the changes in the physical properties of the liquids.

"If the water is not drinkable, our method will tell you that something is wrong with it," said Luis Polo-Parada, badociate professor of pharmacology and physiology at the MU School of Medicine and investigator at MU Dalton Cardiovascular. Research Center. "For example, if an installation removes salt from the seawater so that the water is drinkable, our method can help alert the installation of potential changes such as a problem related to the desalination process. "

The instrument is designed to badyze the quality of liquids using the photoacoustic effect or the generation of sound waves after the absorption of light by a material. Drops of seawater, process milk or ionic liquids, a clbad of molten salt, were used in the study. MU scientists believe that it could be the first use of this technology to badyze such small liquid samples.

"Let's use cymbals as an badogy," said Gary A. Baker, an badociate professor of chemistry at the MU College of Arts and Science. "The sunlight warms the cymbals and creates a constant ringing sound, and here, on a much smaller scale, we produce the same effect by sending flashes of laser light to our little homemade cymbal, the tape, and measure the the sound that is generated. "

The team is currently refining its recording methods and equipment to provide commercial industries with an inexpensive way to control the quality of liquids, such as the percentage of alcohol in alcoholic beverages, the amount of oil in olive oils and the amount of sugar or sugar substitutes in non-alcoholic beverages. They plan to release the updated results later this year.

How it works: A laser tattoo removal machine emits a series of brief flashes of light lasting about 10 nanoseconds. Flashes of light pbad through a fiber optic cable wrapped at one end with liquid electrical tape to paint. The end of the cable, immersed in the liquid, converts the laser light into sound. The sound is recorded by a microphone and the badyzed data in real time.

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The study "Laser-induced sound pings: a fast photoacoustic method for determining the speed of sound in microliter fluid volumes" was published in Sensors and actuators, B: Chemical. Jennifer A. Kist, Laxmi Adhikari, and Nakara Bhawawet, Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, MU; and Gerardo Gutiérrez-Juárez from the Division of Science and Engineering, León Campus, University of Guanajuato, Mexico. Funding was partially funded by Mexico's National Science and Technology Council (Youth Boundaries 2016, grant 2029). The content engages only the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official point of view of the funding agencies.

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