Acoustic toothbrush

All toothbrushes suffer from a serious drawback, says consumer electrics company Philips. On the one hand, the bristles have to exert a significant amount of pressure to squeeze into all the necessary nooks and crannies and clean teeth effectively. On the other, too much pressure can damage the gums.The answer, says Philips, is sound. A number of toothbrushes claim to use ultrasound to help remove plaque but Philips says out that, for safety reasons, the amount of energy used is generally too low to clean effectively.Philips has designed a toothbrush designed to exploit the way bristles on some electric toothbrushes propel liquids across the surface of teeth at acoustic speeds. Instead of bristles, the company's design has a tiny set of rubber bellows that vibrate a thousand times per second. These propel liquid more effectively around the mouth resulting in a toothbrush that cleans the teeth without damaging the gums, says Philips.