16-year-old Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher that uses sound waves to put out fires in seconds
7 September, 2026
Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had.
She studies at CETIS 78 in Altamira, Tamaulipas, and one day decided to put out a candle without blowing, without water, without anything but sound. She assembled a device with a 12-volt battery, a frequency generator, and a speaker that emits 30 pulses per second. That vibration pushes oxygen away from the flames, and the fire simply goes out in five to eight seconds.
She tested it over and over, more than 100 times, until confirming that it also worked on wood, flammable liquids, cooking grease, and electronic equipment. It does not pollute, leave residue, or hurt the person using it. What began as a school experiment now has a name of its own, “Vortex Tech”, and is taking Ángela to represent Mexico at an international fair, where she will present her way of combating one of humanity’s oldest dangers to the world.
