30 fucking kilovolts!
May. 14th, 2006 02:33 pmScavhunt item #115: A flying machine unlike any we've seen. [31 points]
Well, Sayer and Austin sure put that together. Not many other teams even had flying machines, to my knowledge; I saw one team doing something with a hot air balloon, I don't know if that was supposed to be their flying machine, but if it was, it's hardly "unlike any we've seen".
As for the flying machine: You go to see it, it's behind a cardboard screen, with a sign saying: "Do not touch! You will DIE! 30 fucking kilovolts!" The cardboard screen is connected by wires to a computer monitor. Apparently they were using a transformer in there to get it up to that voltage.
You go around to the other side to see the flying machine itself. It looks like just a triangle of wire and a triangle of foil and something connecting them.
Sayer explained the working principle as follows: The extreme voltage ionizes the air. (You can hear it hissing when it works; Sayer says if you do it with the lights off, you can even see the plasma.) The bottom of the flying machine is negatively charged, so the ions are pulled down, and thus, the machine is pulled up.
It doesn't work too reliably - it's hard to get all 3 corners to lift off - but it works. It just sort of levitates.
It's certainly the only flying machine of its kind that I've ever heard of...
-Sniffnoy
Well, Sayer and Austin sure put that together. Not many other teams even had flying machines, to my knowledge; I saw one team doing something with a hot air balloon, I don't know if that was supposed to be their flying machine, but if it was, it's hardly "unlike any we've seen".
As for the flying machine: You go to see it, it's behind a cardboard screen, with a sign saying: "Do not touch! You will DIE! 30 fucking kilovolts!" The cardboard screen is connected by wires to a computer monitor. Apparently they were using a transformer in there to get it up to that voltage.
You go around to the other side to see the flying machine itself. It looks like just a triangle of wire and a triangle of foil and something connecting them.
Sayer explained the working principle as follows: The extreme voltage ionizes the air. (You can hear it hissing when it works; Sayer says if you do it with the lights off, you can even see the plasma.) The bottom of the flying machine is negatively charged, so the ions are pulled down, and thus, the machine is pulled up.
It doesn't work too reliably - it's hard to get all 3 corners to lift off - but it works. It just sort of levitates.
It's certainly the only flying machine of its kind that I've ever heard of...
-Sniffnoy
