Splitting sound with acoustic prism

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Almost 400 years ago, Newton showed that a prism could split white light into the colors of the rainbow, with each colour corresponding to a different wave frequency. Such an “optical prism” relies on a physical phenomenon (refraction) to split light into its constituent frequencies.
Now, a prism exists for sound. Hervé Lissek and his team at EPFL have invented an "acoustic prism" that splits sound into its constituent frequencies using physical properties alone. Its applications in sound detection are published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
The acoustic prism is entirely man-made, unlike optial prisms, which occur naturally in the form of water droplets. Decomposing sound into its constituent frequencies relies on the physical interaction between a sound wave and the structure of the prism. The acoustic prism modifies the propagation of each individual frequency of the sound wave, without any need of computations or electronic components.

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/acoustic-prism-invented-at-epfl/
 
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