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