Ultra quiet air cooling idea (maybe)

[SirDennis]

If the majority of noise from air cooling comes from fast fans and stuff, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to move the air without any moving parts?
Some of you might have seen some Sharper Image commercials with this ionic breeze air filter thingy. It looks like it circulates air by ionizing the air and moving it through the machine. ( If any of you know how this works, please tell me.) Then all the noise you'd hear would be from whistling air. It probably doesn't move much air though.
Maybe someone would like to try and get one of these things and mod it into the front of an Antec case or something. Just an idea.

[flounder43]

I thought about that too...
I would be worried about the EM interference. But even if it didn't move much air, it would filter at the same time!

[PhoenixMDM]

I think i know how they move the ionized air... Don't hold me to this though....

Ions are atoms with an electric charge. A negative oxygen ion would just be an oxygen atom with an extra electron (electrons have a negative charge). A positive one would be missing an electron (nutrons are nutral, and protons are positive, so the protons normally balance out the electrons, but if there are more protons, they cause the particle to have a positive charge.)

Since electricity and magnetism are closely related (think electro-magnet), the ions can be affected by magnetic interference. Because of this, the ions could be pushed away from the machine by generating the same polarity.

If i remember right, those SharperImage things create negative ions, so the machine would have to generate a negative magnetic field inside.

I think that if you DID put one of those ionizers in a comp, it would cause airflow like you're looking for. But, since the ions are electrically charged, i don't know if that would be great for your components. I just get this feeling your floppy (and possibly hard drive) would be affected most, since they use magnets to write the binary code to disks.

Sorry about being so lengthy!!

[Tbird man]

from what i understand of this it looks like the machine ionises the air as it is sucked in from the partial vacume left by the other air leaveing the machine. the ionised air is than attracted by a positivly charged set of plates inside. the air than comes in contact with the plates and is positivly charged being than repelled out by the like charged plates

hope this makes sense