h a l f b a k e r yIt might be better to just get another gerbil.
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It flies! I put this spiraled pipe-cleaner tetrahedron
(linked
picture) in a vertical wind tube,
designed for testing the aerodynamic lift of various
objects,
and it floated by itself in the middle of the tube for
about 10
minutes before coming out the top. Not sure what
aerodynamics
are going on here -- it must have
something to do with all the hairs on the pipe-cleaner
creating drag -- but it was strange to
see a
bunch of pipe cleaners tied to each other floating in mid
air. Another thing was that it got more perfectly swirly
the longer it stayed in the tube because it kept bumping
gently against the walls of the tube and each bump would
bend it a little more into shape.
Swirly Tetra-Kite picture
https://fbcdn-sphot...33_2009921308_n.jpg
[Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013]
Vertical Wind Tube
http://www.exhibitf...ginal/windtube5.jpg
[Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013]
Short clip of a flying yogurt pot in a wind tube
http://doug-makinso...so-much-fun-on.html
[Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013]
Alexander Graham Bell's Tetrahedral Kite
http://en.wikipedia...ki/Tetrahedral_kite
[Private Boney Bunney, May 04 2013]
[link]
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If it already exists, it doesn't belong here. |
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Cheers. My memory is that it had something to do with the
points on the tetrahedron. The next things i will try are a
spherical shape,
shorter haired pipe cleaners or shorter pipe cleaners. |
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a wireframe spherical section perhaps, ie: an umbrella frame. 'grats on getting off the ground. |
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Are we welcoming someone with a duplicate account here? |
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Maybe the artist now known as PBB is turning over a new, artistic, xenzaggy sort of leaf. |
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A vertical wind tube isn't for testing lift, it's for
testing wind resistance. Any object that is lighter
than the force exerted by the wind on it's cross
section will float in one. All it can tell you is if an
object is stable while falling, and, if it has a
variable wind speed, what the object's terminal
velocity is. |
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I would expect a structure of loosely bent pipe-
cleaners to have a fairly low terminal velocity,
since they have a relatively large surface area to
weight ratio. |
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Re. the third link, could this explain the recent
efforts of North Korea to develop advanced yoghurt-
pot technology? |
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Yes, but no need to worry. Despite their recent (allegedly)
successful plastic bag tests, they're at /least/ ten years
away from a workable yogurt pot program. |
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Relevantly, Alexander Graham Bell --
a member of the Deaf Community -- and who
invented
the original Tetrahedral Kite -- sued (killed) Wilbur Wright -
- over the technical difference
between the
Wright's "wing warping" (undulatory) steering
mechanism, and his own (articulated) steering
mechanism -- the aileron (which re-
introduces
the wheel to the undulatory-propulsive motion that
the Wrights tried to patent and that is also is the
principle behind animate motion in general, (all of us
having evolved from fish); and -- the aileron -- which
is responsible for the acceleration of the size and
speed of flying machines, ariel bombing, WWI, WWII,
the atom bomb and other stuff. Oh, and Samuel
Morse was
also a member of the Deaf Community. |
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Thank you [MechE]. I just went out to Home Depot and
bought myself a fan and cardboard tube and it turns out
that almost any structure built out of pipecleaners -
including just a straight tetrahedron with no swirls --
floats in a windtube. I had based this idea on one
experience without any iterations. |
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