Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Swirl-a-Chute

 What's the sound of a half a million plastic rectangles rotating?
  (+8, -2)
(+8, -2) 		  [vote for,
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FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP FLIP

Ever notice how a piece of paper with a small width to length ratio drifts downwards slowly, due to it's high rotation speed? If you strung thousands or millions of lightweight slightly plastic rectangles together. along with some little spinning plastic paper-copters and added them together, it could support a human being.

The large plastic paper helicopters can support an ounce or two each. And the flippy thing, being many hundreds of thousands of them, only need to support a miniscule weight.

The computations support this.
Let's take about 300 choppers and 500,000 paper rectangles.
150 lb man
300/16 = 18.75 lbs.
150-18.75 = 132.25 //Thats for the weight reduction due to the choppers

Now, with that weight reduction, each plastic rectangle only needs to support it's own weight + 0.0002645 pounds, which it can easily do.

We can do it with 50,000 of them, and it would STILL hold 150 lbs, each rectangle only needing to hold up 1/1000th of a pound.

With 500,000 of them, the ride is extremely gentle.

Of course, the choppers are deployed first, on strings, to slow the person down, then everything else comes out. It ought to be pretty interesting.

—DesertFox, Mar 08 2005

Autorotation https://en.wikipedi...g/wiki/Autorotation
how helicopters land without power [notexactly, Mar 30 2015]

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       I like it, but why don't you go first ? [+]
—normzone, Mar 08 2005
   

       Willingly.
—DesertFox, Mar 08 2005
   

       On a side note, 500,000 of these 1 cm by 4 cm rectangles is 2152.78 square feet. That's the size of a medium house, so it woud definitely hold up one person. It might even hold up a car. Definitely able to hold up one measely 150 pound human.
—DesertFox, Mar 08 2005
   

       I calculated in excess for error. With 500,000 of them, the framework could weigh over 1000 pounds and still support itself. Lightweight nylon fibers to hold it together. No rigid framework is needed.
—DesertFox, Mar 08 2005
   

       <begins hunting for pinwheels to cannibalize>   

       The tickertape regiment.
—wagster, Mar 08 2005
   

       Look out! It's the Maple Tree Brigade!
—shapu, Mar 08 2005
   

       According to Charlotte's Web that's how spiders fly the stratosphere.
—pashute, Mar 29 2015
   

       Whatever happened to old DF? Foxy, you out there?
—doctorremulac3, Mar 30 2015
   


 

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