Introduction: Controlled Direction of Fan Captured Balloon
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About: I am an American teaching English at Shangluo University, Shaanxi. I like making machines that do interesting but fairly useless things - I call them Quixotic Machines.
A simpler title could be: Fun With Fan and Balloon
Most of us are familiar with Bernoulli's principle of high and low pressure areas generated by a speeding air column demonstrated with a ping pong ball held aloft by a hair dryer. A few may be aware that a balloon can be captured in the same way by a fan's air stream.
After watching this mesmerizing dance of a balloon with the fan I wondered how adding a control surface (rudder or wing) would influence the balloon. (Note: changes in orientation of the balloon can also be achieved by taping a small weight like a washer or coin to the balloon). The video shows the results of the experiment.
Possible uses of this demonstration:
- advertising might make use of a bobble head balloon - kind of mundane.
- by introducing smoke into the air stream one could utilize a free-standing wind tunnel model for the study of aerodynamics.
Or we could just have fun watching the balloon interact with the fan.
Most of us are familiar with Bernoulli's principle of high and low pressure areas generated by a speeding air column demonstrated with a ping pong ball held aloft by a hair dryer. A few may be aware that a balloon can be captured in the same way by a fan's air stream.
After watching this mesmerizing dance of a balloon with the fan I wondered how adding a control surface (rudder or wing) would influence the balloon. (Note: changes in orientation of the balloon can also be achieved by taping a small weight like a washer or coin to the balloon). The video shows the results of the experiment.
Possible uses of this demonstration:
- advertising might make use of a bobble head balloon - kind of mundane.
- by introducing smoke into the air stream one could utilize a free-standing wind tunnel model for the study of aerodynamics.
Or we could just have fun watching the balloon interact with the fan.
