A more compact and pleasant-sounding alternative to the ear-splitting vuvuzela has arrived, thanks to a group of enterprising engineering students at Diablo Valley College in the East Bay.
Members of Diablo Valley College’s National Society of Black Engineers in Pleasant Hill have come up with a quieter alternative to the vuvuzela, as KPIX reports. The team of students reportedly spent six weeks designing and building the “Pleasant Horn,” a smaller noisemaker intended to capture the spirit of the infamous World Cup horn without the same overwhelming volume.
The vuvuzela became synonymous with the 2010 World Cup before it was banned from subsequent tournaments. According to the Chronicle, a CDC report citing a 2010 South African Medical Journal study warned that vuvuzelas can reach jet engine–level sound pressure and could cause hearing loss or tinnitus after just 45 seconds of daily exposure within two meters.
Student Ayomi Ikutiminu, who helped lead the project, reportedly consulted with musicians while developing the horn and incorporated a balloon diaphragm into the design to soften its tone. The team went through multiple design iterations before settling on a final version, with early prototypes taking more than seven hours to print.
“We just did a lot of research to figure out why the vuvuzela sounds so loud,” Ikutiminu told the Chronicle. “First of all, it sounds badly because as you can see right here, this (vuvuzela) grows linearly instead of exponentially. When an instrument grows exponentially, it sounds a lot better, it sounds acoustically better.”
The Pleasant Horn is also less than half the size of its predecessor at 10 inches long, versus the vuvuzela's 26 inches, and its mouthpiece positioning gives it a closer resemblance to a musical instrument than a traditional noisemaker.
The project was reportedly commissioned through a partnership between Diablo Valley College and Visit Pleasant Hill, which is hoping to draw World Cup visitors to the East Bay. A local manufacturing company produced 50 of the horns for a local World Cup kickoff event.
Visit Pleasant Hill is also providing World Cup tickets to Ikutiminu and several of the students who worked on the project, and they plan to bring their Pleasant Horns to a match in Santa Clara.
Related: How to Watch the First World Cup Matches, at Home or at an SF Bar
Top image via Visit Pleasant Hill/Facebook
