Notebooks of Scott

Air pressure. We experience it every day. For those of us living around sea level, we must endure 14.9 pounds pushing down on every square inch of our bodies. Of course, since the air is also pushing in every other direction, we don’t feel it at all.

Due to the fact that we experience air pressure on a daily basis, we at Thematic Attic decided it would be an excellent topic to cover in one of our Science Saturday workshops, specifically using hover craft.

One of the demonstrations that I came up with for the workshop was a paper plate hovercraft. I built it out of a large 12 volt computer fan that was placed over a hole in a paper plate. I happened to have a generic transformer that could deliver 12 volts and so, with a little soldering, I had a way to power the fan indefinately. Voila! A Hover Craft

In retrospect, I would consider going with a smaller fan since this one seemed to lose a lot of air straight up through the fan. However, it was able to force and keep enough air under the plate to lift the edges and allow it to float across the table.

In researching this project I saw several articles on how to make a ride-able hover craft out of some plywood and a leaf blower. Coincidentally enough, this showed up in my living room a couple days later…