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.-- Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013 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] If it already exists, it doesn't belong here.-- Alterother, May 02 2013 But welcome to the HB.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 02 2013 Thank you.-- Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013 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.-- Private Boney Bunney, May 02 2013 a wireframe spherical section perhaps, ie: an umbrella frame. 'grats on getting off the ground.-- FlyingToaster, May 03 2013 Are we welcoming someone with a duplicate account here?-- xandram, May 03 2013 Maybe the artist now known as PBB is turning over a new, artistic, xenzaggy sort of leaf.-- bungston, May 03 2013 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.
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.-- MechE, May 03 2013 Re. the third link, could this explain the recent efforts of North Korea to develop advanced yoghurt- pot technology?-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2013 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.-- ytk, May 03 2013 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.-- Private Boney Bunney, May 04 2013 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.-- Private Boney Bunney, May 09 2013 random, halfbakery