Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vocal Bam here with a classic episode
Speaker 1: from former host Christian Sager, and this one we explore
Speaker 1: how the traditional electro mechanical car horn works. And we
Speaker 1: were doing a whole mad Max Fury road thing, which
Speaker 1: I hope holds up. My name is Christian, My world
Speaker 1: is fire and blood. Once I honked the horn of
Speaker 1: my Interceptive Pursuit Special, it's hard to know who was
Speaker 1: more crazy, me or everyone else. No, really, when people
Speaker 1: haunk car horns, they're pretty freaking aggressive. Research shows were
Speaker 1: more likely to do it when it's hot outside, when
Speaker 1: it's a weekday, And if you're male, that's right, war boys.
Speaker 1: Here in the US, your run of the mill car
Speaker 1: horn is a hundred and ten decibels of sustained noise.
Speaker 1: While the vehicle horns of yesteryear had different com nations
Speaker 1: of notes, today they're mostly regulated to sound the same
Speaker 1: and the law requires you to have a car horn.
Speaker 1: If they're so important, Let's talk about how car horns work.
Speaker 1: Typical car horns these days are electro mechanical. There are
Speaker 1: two horns per vehicle, usually each sounding at a different
Speaker 1: pitch to produce a cord. These horns generally consist of
Speaker 1: a spring, steel diaphragm, a coiled wire, a switch, and
Speaker 1: housing that amplifies sound like a megaphone. All of this
Speaker 1: is mounted somewhere behind your vehicle's grill. So when you
Speaker 1: slam your hand on that steering wheel button with a
Speaker 1: little trumpet symbol on it, it sends an electrical current
Speaker 1: through a relay and onto a copper coil that supplies
Speaker 1: electricity to the horn. To create such a loud sound
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy. In fact, the only accessory
Speaker 1: that uses more juice in your car is the starter.
Speaker 1: The all trickle currents surging into the horn creates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field. This field causes the flat circular diaphragm inside
Speaker 1: to oscillate. The oscillation is set up by the diaphragm
Speaker 1: flexing to its mechanical limit and then releasing back past
Speaker 1: its neutral position, only to be pulled forward again. This
Speaker 1: functions by using the basic law of elasticity, also known
Speaker 1: as Hook's law because it was formulated in the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century by an English scientist named Robert Hook. The law
Speaker 1: states that the strain of a body is proportional to
Speaker 1: the stress applied to the body. What this means for
Speaker 1: the car horn is that it's diaphragm will oscillate continuously
Speaker 1: as long as the current is applied. There are also
Speaker 1: other types of horns used in vehicles, air horns, claxon's
Speaker 1: whistles similar to organ pipes, and even sirens like we
Speaker 1: see on emergency vehicles, but the electro magnetic car horn
Speaker 1: is the most common one you're going to find out
Speaker 1: there in the waste land. Now that you're armed with
Speaker 1: this knowledge, you should be ready to grab the sun
Speaker 1: and ride into Valhalla. Today's episode was written by Christian
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: i Heeart Radios has Stuff Works. For more in this
Speaker 1: and lots of other topics that are shiny and chrome,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet has to Works dot com and
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