Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9i9rwg1L_A

And then tell me how many barrels of animal birthing lube that you're going to be ordering.

#video #SlowMoGuys #AdamSavage #BobbyFingers #Fabio #goose #lube #airCannon

link: https://www.twobraids.com/2024/01/air-cannon.html

An agricultural air cannon began firing every two minutes all night long disrupting the sleep of many in my community. I used Google Maps, three listening posts, and a programmed simulation to pinpoint the field hosting the air cannon. The county tax assessor office identified the land owner. I had a phone conversation with the farm manager. That conversation was coincident with the cessation of the nighttime air cannon. I can sleep again.

This reminded me of an old Mathnet story from the TV show Square One titled “Despair in Monterey Bay”, where they are looking for a diamond and use triangulation to pinpoint its whereabouts:

https://joelencioni.com/links/finding-the-air-cannon/

#AirCannon #DetectiveWork #diamond #Mathnet #MontereyBay #SquareOne

Let's use some math to find out where that pesky air cannon is! Confused? Mpark makes it clear in this post!

https://www.metafilter.com/202339/Finding-the-Air-Cannon

#math #aircannon #geese #bestofmetafilter

Building A Simple #Compressed #AirCannon Is Easy

https://hackaday.com/2024/01/01/building-a-simple-compressed-air-cannon-is-easy/

Rapid-Reload Vacuum Cannon Totally Demolishes Those Veggies

[NightHawkInLight] has been developing his design for a vacuum canon for a while now, so it seems fitting to drop in check out the progress. The idea is pretty straightforward, take a long rigid tube, insert a close fitting piston, magnetically attached to a projectile, and stopper the open end with something easily destroyed. The piston needs to be pulled into the tube with some force, to pull a vacuum against the stopper. The interesting bit happens next, when the piston exits the other end of the tube, with the vacuum at its maximum, there is a sudden inrush of air. Apparently this inrush of supersonic velocity, and the momentum of the mass of air is sufficient to eject the projectile at considerable velocity, smashing through the plug and demolishing the target. So long as the target is of the soft and squishy variety anyway.

It's an interesting idea, and certainly gives plenty of bang for not many bucks. That big lump of acrylic tubing (presumably used for ease of explanation in the video) looks fairly expensive to buy off the shelf, but we reckon any old pipe would probably work out fine.

We've definitely covered our share of DIY projectile weapons, like this air cannon made from PVC pipe parts, and of course there's this crazy big one, that you should definitely not try at home.

Thanks [Keith] for the tip!

#classichacks #science #aircannon #vacuum

Supersonic Baseball Hitting a Gallon of Mayo Is Great Flow Visualization

Those of us who enjoy seeing mechanical carnage have been blessed by the rise of video sharing services and high speed cameras. Oftentimes, these slow motion videos are heavy on destruction and light on science. However, this video from [Smarter Every Day] is worth watching, purely for the fluid mechanics at play when a supersonic baseball hits a 1-gallon jar of mayo.

The experiment uses the baseball cannon that [Destin] of [Smarter Every Day] built last year. Ostensibly, the broader aim of the video is to characterize the baseball cannon's performance. Shots are fired with varying pressures applied to the air tank and vacuum levels applied to the barrel, and the data charted.

However, the real glory starts 18:25 into the video, where a baseball is fired into the gigantic jar of mayo. The jar is vaporized in an instant from the sheer power of the collision, with the mayo becoming a potent-smelling aerosol in a flash.

Amazingly, the slow-motion camera reveals all manner of interesting phenomena. There's a flash of flame as the ball hits the jar, suggesting compression ignition happened at impact with the jar's label. A shadow from the shockwave ahead of the ball can be seen in the video, and particles in the cloud of mayo can be seen changing direction as the trailing shock catches up.

The slow-motion footage deserves to be shown in flow-visualization classes, not only because it's awesome, but because it's a great demonstration of supersonic flow phenomena. Video after the break.

#science #aircannon #baseball #baseballs #highspeedvideo #slomo #slowmo #slowmotion