have you ever wondered what it'd be like to blow something in mid-air
yeah speak too
welcome to impossible science
hey guys it's jason latimer the world champion of magic and first of all what
you just saw in my garage well that was a total illusion but it did get
me wondering what would it take to float an object to mid-air and how could we
actually do it at our homes and assuming you're not going to install
a giant wind tunnel in your garage i came up with an idea here's a science
experiment you can build and it uses the koanda effect okay here's a great
magic trick you can play on your friends take a ping-pong ball and concentrate
really hard
this is not a magic trick because it really sounds like this
okay so this experiment is really easy to make at home uses
the top of a water bottle that's been cut off and i've taped it to the top of
a hair dryer and then you take a ping-pong ball and
you put it in the airstream
now for the effect that you just saw i just put the hair dryer outside of the
view of the camera
and if you dub your voice over it you can make it look like magic
now this is a lot of fun because you can actually make an obstacle course
and see if you can get the ping pong ball to travel through the obstacle
course now we can pretty much guess why the
ball is just sitting in midair the upward force of airflow is equal to the
force of gravity pulling down on the ball
but that doesn't explain why the ball isn't just flying out of the airstream
why is the ping-pong ball trapped in mid-air even when i tilt the hairdryer
well if you don't understand it you probably would call it magic
but turns out scientists have actually figured this out but before i get into
that let's talk about air pressure now when
air moves around an object there's a difference in air pressure
faster moving air creates lower air pressure and the slower and
stagnant air is means there'll be higher air pressure
watch i'll show you you take a piece of paper and if i blow across the top of
this their fasting moving air creates lower
air pressure on top and on the bottom this is now higher air pressure because
it's slower watch
so how's it work well the high air pressure below the piece of paper is now
pushing the paper into that low air pressure pocket
now that's great but what does that have to do with the ball not flying out of
the airstream well that part has to do with the quanda
effect okay now air is moving on all sides of the ball but it's moving faster
on the side closest to the center of the airstream
so let's take a closer look at the faster moving side
as air rushes towards the ball the airflow is forced to pick a side of
which way to pass around the ball as that airflow gets deflected when it
hits the ball the moving air is actually pulling the air next to the ball away
with it and this creates a lower pressure pocket
just to the side of the ball and this does two things first it causes
the air that's traveling around the ball to be pulled back towards its surface to
fill that lower pressure pocket when airflow follows a curved surface
scientists call this the koanda effect and at the same time the high pressure
on the opposite side of the ball now pushes our ping pong ball into that
lower pressure pocket as the ball moves towards that lower
pressure pocket the symmetrical ball begins deflecting even more
air on the opposite side of the ball this lowers the air pressure on the
opposite side moving our ball back this happens on all
sides of our ball stabilizing our ball in this constant
flow of air
under slow motion we can see how the ball is constantly adjusting for the
ever-changing sides of low air pressure
well that's it for today i hope you enjoyed impossible science at home
and if you did let me know by clicking the like button and subscribing to the
channel and if you had fun with the kwanda
effect and an illusion that you can fool your friends with
then let me know in the comments below and until next time stay curious
because the right question changes
everything
laughs
you