On Tue, 24 Apr 2012, Terry Blanton wrote:
This one does by turning inside out:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/04/flying-object-propels-itself-by-flipping-inside-out.html?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2012-2304-GLOBAL|flyingobjects&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_content=flyingobjects
It flies like a water-weenie toy: smoke ring propulsion. Ring vortices
can sometimes move without turbulence, since they are themselves a stable
form of turbulence (vortex shedding.)
Here's their standalone vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLxWnGKaYIk
Speculating on shockwave-suppressed smoke-ring propulsion back in 2000:
High-speed Vortex Blimp
http://amasci.com/amateur/vortgen.html#blimp
Question: inside a large sphere of fluid hanging in free-fall, if you
launch a travelling vortex-ring inside, will it be disrupted when it hits
the surface of the sphere? Or will pass through the interface and carry a
blob of fluid into the surrounding space? If the latter, then the large
sphere could be propelled by ejecting small spheres ...but wouldn't it
only experience a reaction force at the moment the small sphere left the
main mass, and not when the vortex-launcher was originally fired?
:)
Yet a ring-vortex is composed of closed-loop flows, so how can it carry
linear momentum? Yet apparently it does, since a vortex-launcher
experiences a non-negligable "kick" when flinging out a vortex-ring. I'm
thinking about pulsed-detonation "smoke ring" engines where the exhaust
orfice is the intake as well. Also, crowds of jellyfish living in a
spherical pond in free fall. Do jellyfish end up ejecting themselves from
one side of the sphere, while their vortex-rings are ejected from the
opposite pole, and the pond itself doesn't interact much with either?
Need a ten-gallon ball of salt water floating in a hundred-gallon tank of
density-matched freon.
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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 206-762-3818 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
