Just Chuck This Ball at a Fire to Put It Out With an Explosion

The Elide Fire Ball doesn't mess around.

Normal fire extinguishers are great, and they save countless lives, but they do have their downsides. Big metal ones can be heavy, they can be a little intimidating to operate, and you have to grab one and then walk directly towards the fire if you want to accomplish anything. The Elide Fire Ball, on the other hand, offers a different solution. Just throw it over there and then head the other way. 

The ball is relatively lightweight at around three pounds, and smallish at less than the size of a soccer ball. But that doesn't keep it from holding a pretty decent amount of extinguishing chemical power apparently, as you can see from demos of the product in action: 

The act of literally throwing the ball at a fire is certainly the flashiest application, but probably not the most practical. The more unique and useful approach seems to be installing the ball close to potential fire sources, in which case it will automatically trigger (i.e. explode) incase of fire. Mounting a ball to the wall is a heck of a lot easier than installing a sprinkler system. 

The demo from above is actually from 2013, so why haven't these things taken the world by storm? A few possible reasons. The gimmick is definitely neat, but you'll note all the demos involve throwing the ball into a pretty contained box of fire, which if you think about it is probably not the most common inferno you'll find. 

The Elide Fire Ball would be a nightmare, for instance, if you were just trying to put out a small kitchen fire on your stove. Or a blazing curtain that's set just one wall of a rather large room aflame. Or anything where you could conceivably "miss." A standard extinguisher that allows you to do stuff like aim might be a bit more handy in those situations.  

Traditional extinguishers, while cumbersome in a few different ways, are pretty versatile but the Elide Fire Ball is sort of a one—at best two—trick pony. You've got to admit though, the trick is pretty cool. 

Source: Elide Fire Ball via PSFK, Digg 

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