Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Paper Shooter

 Spreads papers over large areas
 
(+2, -2) 		  [vote for,
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This is used strictly for promotions. It's a device that loads a stack of papers like coupons, flyers, even money and spits it out through two rollers. This would be great for crowds like concerts and radio station promotions. It is chiefly designed for visual effect - and quite honestly has no real practical purpose other than making a mess. It could be handheld for working a crowd or mounted somewhere, like on a stage, with a long snout so that you could spread the papers over a larger area. This idea could also be electric with a motion detector and be loaded with confetti. It is an idea that is totally geared for the promotion or advertising market simply because there is no other application for it IMO, and they are the only ones who would pay for it anyway.
—marc1919, Oct 18 2001

Paper Darts http://www.tomshiro.org/pdart
A blunted dart would be easy to launch with a high-speed fan and a length of pipe. [BigBrother, Oct 18 2001]

[link]






       I wonder how far you could fire them. I think stiff card could go a few feet. Or you could design fliers to catch the wind, maybe. (Would that make this a paper plane launcher? It could fold them first)
—pottedstu, Oct 18 2001
   

       Can I adjust the rollers to shoot pizzas?
—phoenix, Oct 18 2001
   

       surely they'd flip over and go about a foot, like when you try and throw one single sheet of paper
—dekoi, Oct 18 2001
   

       A printing press with a large fan behind it. Or a photocopier. Helium filled balloons containing flyers or confetti could be exploded over crowds to release contents
—sessa, Oct 18 2001
   

       Way back when, I read a web site about paper darts for use in a blow gun. It requires rolling the paper into a long, narrow cone. If the aspect ratio is right, you can get 30 meters or more of distance out of these very simple darts. As proposed in the web site, these darts are capable of drawing blood at range.   

       Perhaps if a machine could be designed to roll a full sheet of office paper into a narrow cone, minus the sharp tip of course, and tack the loose edge down with a weak adhesive, then a leaf-blower-like apparatus could be used to launch ads and coupons over the heads of a crowd. If it could be made reliable enough for a rapid-fire mode, the visual effect might be impressive.
—BigBrother, Oct 22 2001
   

       I think the problem of giving distance to thrown paper can be solved by using a plastic wad, like the type used to hold shot together in a shotgun shell. For those that don't know, this is like a plastic cup that surrounds the paper (or shot), keeping it together for some distance after it leaves the barrel. Shortly after being fired, wind resistance causes the wad to slow and release its contents. Once free of the wad, the paper disperses. With this arrangement, advertisers can shoot their wad high over a crowd, and shower a large number of people with flyers.
—Guncrazy, Oct 22 2001
   

       Build a machine to launch atmospheric vortices, and design paper to be carried along? Alternatively, yeah, paper airplanes (the logical extreme of which is the dart design BigBrother mentioned).
—egnor, Oct 22 2001
   

       // advertisers can shoot their wad high over a crowd, and shower a large number of people //
Gee, that sounds really bad out of context. ;)		   

       Instead of rolling a tight, pointy cone, how about a shape more like those cupcake/muffin papers? A flat square of paper could be rolled off a stack, and pressed into shape with a plunger-and-bore. A ribbed texture inside the bore would prevent the formed paper from retracting with the plunger. The next sheet of paper is pressed in behind the first, and so on until there is a queue of paper "cups" in a long tube. A large air jet then launches the whole set into the air, where wind resistance and turbulence helps them to scatter over the audience.
—BigBrother, Oct 25 2001
   

       You would have to design some sort of variable speed for the mechanism or all the sheets/darts would end up in the same place/range.
—LardyBloke, Oct 25 2001
   

       Ooh, neat to see a reference to my site (http://tomshiro.org/pdart, above). You cannot shoot paper darts through a tube with a fan, but I have successfully shot them with the output end of a vacuum cleaner. Making them automatically and having people figure out that they contain messages would be a difficult challenge though.
—dartrolller, Jun 05 2002
   
      
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