I was looking around for a toy I had when I was a kid. Basically a water powered rocket that you pumped up, and it would launch about 30 feet in the air.
“Well, if it goes so far up, then surely it would fly a good distance horizontally, especially if I aimed it at…. my sister!”
Well, turns out it hurts really bad to get beamed in the head with a water rocket, so it was no more rocket propelled toys for me after that. I figured almost certainly the Safety Nazi Nanny Staters would have banned that bit of fun by now, but no… You can still buy one. Of course, the same basic principle eventually leads to this:
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6943201001782160188[/googlevideo]
i want to find a place to buy lawn darts
That video is freakin’ amazing! I love it. And while I may not have th cajones to try something like that myself I can totally see my 25 year-old son doing this.
The old valve stem from a tubeless tire rim will fit perfectly in the mouth of a 2 liter bottle. Mr. Wizard taught me that.
Use a long airhose and/or be sure that your compressor is weatherproof.
Where can I get a Met helm like he was wearing?
I hate to be that guy but….something doesn’t look right. I think it was partially faked – i.e, they used a crane.
Mythbusters did something like this, and they did get some lift, but nothing like what was seen in that video.
Yeah, I agree. I expected it to do nothing, but when it launched the guy I thought it was pretty funny.
Re: Lawn Darts – Try http://www.lawndartparts.com/
You can’t buy the assembled darts, but you can buy replacement parts for each and every part of the dart. What you do with all of those parts is up to you ;)
American Science and Surplus has air-powered rockets too.
I’m with Regolith – This doesn’t look right. Any thrust generated from the bottles is massively far back from his center of gravity, and I expected to see him cartwheeling as a result with little to no distance. I’m going with “faked.”
That made me laugh so hard i farted.