Is It Possible To Blow Your Own Sail?

Hello everyone, today we are going to see if you can fly

your

own

sail

. Someone recently sent me a video of a janitor riding a skateboard holding a candle and then

blow

ing it out with a leaf

blow

er and that kept him going, so let's go. Go ahead and evaluate this and see if that would actually be

possible

. Something seems a little strange here. I have a mini version of that little setup here. It is a car with wheels and a strong fan, so let's put a board in front of it first. This polycarbonate sheet here and let's see if it's actually able to push itself into the ground.

Okay, three, two, one, it's not going anywhere, but now remove the board, it's not going anywhere, but remove it, it's actually going very fast, so you can see that. For this to work I had to remove the board it was blowing on, without it it could fly freely, so first let's try it as I saw it in the video, the cell in front of me. and I'm going to shoot it with the leaf blower here, so let's see if it really works well three two one doesn't work I'm not going anywhere to make this work take out the candle turn in the other direction and but why?

It's just that when there's this board in front of it it doesn't move, there's air pushing it, so why doesn't it push it forward like this? Well, let's look at the forces involved here, okay, right now this thing weighs zero grams, okay, and then. turning on the fan weighs 22 grams so you can see when I turn on the fan it is the equivalent of putting 22 grams or turning it to force .05 pounds of force in this direction now the only reason it works is because it is throwing air in this direction and due to the propulsion of the mass in this direction, it is pushed in the opposite direction, but now what happens when we put this in front of it?

Now turn on the fan so you can see that when we put it on it basically weighed about the same. on the scale there was no really significant force on it and we know there is no really significant force because it's not going anywhere, it can't even overcome the friction of the wheels to move, so why isn't it moving? It's because the fan is still throwing air in this direction, but then when it hits the sheet right here, it creates a force in the opposite direction, so this fan is throwing the equivalent of 22 grams of air in that direction, which it makes it want to go in this direction, but then those 22 grams of air hit this and make it want to go in that direction, so they exactly balance each other and it doesn't go in any direction, of course, if you want to move somewhere If you want to be moved to some place with air that you can't let hit a plate in front of you, you have to let it fly in the other direction and then you can go in this direction.

I sound like a fool because everyone likes that doesn't work so you need the leaf blower or just the candle. but not both together, so let's just try the

sail

, we're going with the wind now, if only I could steer it, so thanks for watching another episode of action lab. I hope you enjoyed it if you have any questions or comments let me know in the comments. section and I will try to access them and visit actionlab.com to see the action lab experiment boxes. Thanks for watching and see you next time.