Airmazing Solar Bag

well it's time to fly a solar bag and there's a couple of things you're going to need I always like to have two Solar bags because one is great practice if anything happens to it and you've created this command performance situation you always have a second one to rely on second thing that you need you always have to have string right it's always good to have a little bit of tape to repair a little hole and the most important thing that you need a big huge open area like this that's the only way that you're going to be able to have success flying your solar bag did I mention you need one more thing the Sun now the Sun at all times during the day and not great you're going to see that you're really going to want to fly your solar bag earlier in the morning you want a cooler temperature in the outside and you want the maximum difference with the air inside the solar bag versus the surrounding air so earlier in the morning much much better all right 25 foot bag totally manageable with just one person nice big grassy area I found that if you're using a gravel area like we have over here with the baseball area it's easy to poke a hole in this these are super super thin they have to be give us the floatation that you're going to want all right here's your do the first thing that you need to do throw out the solar bag and now let's tie off one end of the solar bag so you're going to want to unroll it so that when you eventually get air inside that it easily inflates so take one end of the solar bag like this at the very end a simple overhand knot like that all right now as you roll out the rest of this try to keep it from folding and wrinkling twisting that kind of thing on each other and now you're going to open up this end here there's a little bit of breeze this morning so it's going to make it even easier to inflate it so you notice how see how thin this is it's going to be easy to tear it if you're not careful look at this just holding it open I'm able to allow some air to be able to go inside now one of the techniques that I've used in the past is this is to hold onto it here like this and to slowly work that bubble of air down into the solar bag so now it's much easier to inflate the rest of it so if you work it down take the time to be able to do that you're going to be able to see if there's any little tiny holes along the way and whether or not it's going to be easy to inflate this is going to be really really easy to inflate again we have a small little breeze that's here and all I have to do is a little run with it like this allowing the air to come down like this and now grab it here on the end and very carefully start to pull it so it's tight notice this this is really really important before I do anything look at the surface of the solar bag it should be very very shiny if it's wrinkly you know that you've got a whole look at it very carefully and you're going to feel in your hand that it's actually starting to the it's starting to expand the air inside is getting warmer so you don't want to keep it super tight because we don't want to break the solar bag but at the same time we're really looking for it to be nice and tight once you see whether or not it's tight it looks like it's holding air nicely give it a few twists on this in here and now I'm going to put a loose overhand knot in it like this so that I can easily come back and untie that now without doing anything at all notice that nobody holding onto the other end we have buoyancy right the bag is beginning to float because the air and the inside is warmer than the air on the outside so it's that buoyancy that's allowing that to be able to float up you cannot let go and let me repeat this again look directly into my eyes you cannot let go you know the danger of releasing something like this into the air this is a 25-foot object they could float in the air of course it could cause some FAA problems but maybe even more importantly it's easy for something like this to get caught in powerlines so do not let go this is where it's great to make sure that you have your string right there it very few times I would imagine you're ever doing this by yourself so notice what I have here I've got the string I'm going to wrap the string around like this a couple times tie this off excellent so in my experience that if you successfully float your solar bag and get it back that you're going to lose the last little piece of it anyway because you're going to find little tears and so forth so we get a little bit smaller a couple times that you're flying it but look at this I'm not going to let the string out much at all the whole idea is not to let it away and let it get away from you a couple hundred feet the idea is to keep it completely under control you can see that what you're trying to do here you're trying to get it to float in to see the buoyancy of the of the solar bag without pushing it up in the air or anything like this we are totally getting that flotation so it's powered only by the Sun again that expanding air that's on the inside you want that to be expanded and you want it to be warmer of course on the inside than it is on the outside so one of the experiments you can try is to float this at different times during the day try something early in the morning try something at noon try something a little bit later in the evening and you'll see what you're going to have best luck with I can tell you that we've had best luck with the morning because of the colder temperature in the fact that the Sun is really shining down on it but it's a great experiment for you to be able to try you'll notice that in a backyard setting that this was easy to be able to fly I didn't need to have this huge area here for just that single bag if you were having to if you happen to float two of these at the same time and of course you want to give yourself more than enough room the most important thing is to keep it under control at all times you want to know how people pop the solar bag I'll show you what it's going to be exciting there's going to be people who are going to gather around there's going to be kids who are going to be so excited to reach out and touch what you have to realize right now is the bag is extremely hot well you can't see that here I can tell you that as you bring this back in again and you touch the surface of it it is extremely hot that means it's very very easy for little fingers especially with fake your nails to reach up and not even intentionally trying to pop it to touch it in to poke a hole in it if for any reason you were to get a little tiny hole in it the scotch tape that I showed you before it's easy to be able to just put a little piece of scotch tape over into to save your solar bag that way but little kids who touch it inevitably pop it so the best thing you can do is just to have people stand around and watch it or use one bag as you're learning bag as all the kids kind of gather around because it really will pop I have not had much success over the years having little kids hold onto it and play with it and then come back and try to fly it again because it seems to get some some holes in it we know that we're doing great because not only have we floated the solar bag but look at how shiny it is can you see the heat even coming off some of the bag area here if you take a look at it you can even see some of the the heat almost looks like a mirage right that's coming off right here you're able to see just how much solar energy that bag is is holding on to and attracting with that black surface there the secret here very very thin bag and and being able to trap that much air and being able to allow that air to expand and evitt ibly be able to float a great successful launch today all right let's bring it back in again you're going to be able to save the bag and do it again the best way to be able to do this again is not to scrape this across any gravel or anything you want to make sure that we have the the grass that's here that can the it's nice and soft for it I'm going to bring it back in make sure that it stays under control and now I'm going to untie this part of the solar bag here so holding on to it you're going to untie it be able to take the string off like this and now this is where you need to be very very careful because we're going to allow the air to come out but this air is extremely hot and we want to be able to allow this to deflate and not whip all over the place so I'm going to slowly let the air out like this bring it in slowly move it around wow the air to come out again being as careful as I can with it now grabbing this end if you have somebody helping you it's easy on that in to allow them to hold on to it look at how the air evacuates by itself and you've completely deflated it now best thing that I found is if you wrap it up very very loosely like this and you may have to let it cool down I've been fairly lucky that it's cold enough this morning that the bag cooled down very very quickly put up like this so now it's not going to be knotted and I'll either take a pillowcase or another plastic bag and put this in to the pillowcase with a plastic bag and now I've got a way to be able to save this for another launch all right successful on to the solar bag big open area the power of the Sun to float this giant solar sausage have fun what a great successful launch of the solar bag and remember the reason why you're going to have scotch tape is so that if you ever get a little tiny hole in it you're going to be able to fix it with that's not going to get fixed just a little bit a tape here fixity Henry I'm going to need some more tape it's pretty close though go get some more tape please just get that get the kind that's like invisible hurry it's getting hot out here

Channel: TheSpanglerEffect

Views: 4,038,275

Rating: 4.1915932 out of 5

Keywords: The Spangler Effect, TheSpanglerEffect, Spangler Effect, SpanglerEffect, Steve Spangler Science, SteveSpanglerScience, Steve Spangler, SteveSpangler, Cool Science Experiments, Cool Science, Solar Bag

Id: hQWttrozUnQ

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/theslouchgod]

That’s one big volcano

[u/midasisking]

And he's got some funky ideas about the possibilities https://youtu.be/hQWttrozUnQ?t=358 (@6:05).