Air Cannon
The air cannon works by shooting a vortex of air in the direction you point it at. If you use smoke you can actually see the ring of smoke travelling in the air.
Components:
- 1 Cannon pipe
- 1 set of paper cups
Working Principle:
Air is made of matter and with this device you can generate a vortex, a whirling mass of air, and make it travel in a given direction.
This effect is explained by Bernoulli’s principle which states that if you increase the speed of a fluid its static pressure decreases.
The principle was first stated in 1738 by Daniel Bernoulli in his book Hydrodynamica. Despite the fact that Bernoulli deduced that pressure falls as flow speed increases, it was Leonhard Euler who derived Bernoulli’s equation in its current form in 1752.
When the air is shot from the cannon, it travels at a high speed, which means the pressure from external air is higher than the pressure of the moving air. This allows the ring shaped air to maintain its form for a long period of time whilst traveling in the same direction. As the ring of air travels it faces resistance (friction) from the surrounding air and gradually looses kinetic energy and reduces speed.
As the speed reduces the internal pressure increases and the ring expands because the difference between the ring air and the surrounding air becomes smaller and smaller.
Instructions:
- Arrange the paper cups in a pyramid shape
- Take the air cannon and shoot a vortex in the direction of the pyramid of cups and try to knock them out.