Potato cannon powered glider!

hey guys backyard scientist here you know as much as I like making things like rocket-powered knives and giant mousetraps I really enjoy making things that other people can make so let me introduce you to the potato cannon powered airplane check it out so I've been wanting to make this video for a while right but the problem is I have no idea how to make a good plane when I can make a pretty sweet air cannon so this is the air cannon we're gonna be using right it's pretty simple it's got a one inch barrel ball valve super easy to make and I'm not gonna spend any time going over cuz I'm assuming that you guys already have a cannon first they have a cannon why wouldn't they so planes can't fly them at all but I got a friend that can help my friend Joe used to be the president of the Engineering club at my college super smart guy so he's down to help me with this but the problem is he lives in a different city so it's kind of hard to build something together when you're not there building it together so Joe and I have been working together over the new Dropbox paper and it's been really easy to collaborate on this so he's been sending me lists of stuff I need to buy he's been sharing me diagrams 3d files that I could print to help improve the strength of my glider he's been sending me videos on other people building gliders he's been sending the advanced PhD level math on how to fix the center of gravity for my plane so the new Dropbox paper has just made it really easy to collaborate on stuff you can share pictures make lists do all kinds of you know timelines and calendars and just share everything with each other on one place it's really nice okay well as you can see I have been building planes all week and my friend Joe is coming over this weekend so we're gonna see which planes work the best I've got big wings I've got small wings and we're gonna be testing out all these different configurations to see which ones fly them fast look who it is Joe just showed up and you brought his plane so Joe tell us about your plans then they tell me about my planes why my planes are gonna be better alright so what I got here is a couple planes that were made out of dollar tree foam board carbon arrow shafts and cardboard tubes cardboard right there alright so that's pretty cool but this is my plan so look at this look at all this tape or tape means more power am i right alright I think this will fly fast really heavy yeah we'll see we're gonna go out and we're gonna test these and we're gonna let you know which designs the best and then show you how to build them let's get started so we went out to test our plane designs Joe's lightweight carbon fiber based plane versus my any we learned a lot about our designs did you see how that was the best test yet I think this is the good design Joe yeah I'd say that that was a pretty good play look at that it's like 50 feet up there I just need to take that design optimize it and run with it yeah and then you can get a stuck in a tree a hundred feet up okay so what we actually have here with all these planes is a really good example of how engineering is done we iteratively improve on a design trying to figure out and zero in on the what what is actually going to be important in that design so we have the planes that are too fast claims that are too heavy planes are too slow and eventually by trying all of these variations we're gonna get to just the right combination of what will fly as far as you possibly can with the go dude that was so cool alright alright alright we've been having enough fun sine of these things so let me teach you how to build them so you can find them yourself so I told you I like project C you guys can make it home and I really like them even more when they're super cheap you can make a foam glider like this for like three dollars seriously all you need is a piece of foam board something to cut it with some packing tape like and a hot glue gun and then you can make it awesome glider let me show you how to do it so for reference this is what the wing will look like when you're done with it it's got the four loom supports with the carbon arrow right in the middle and here's the template made from Dollar Tree foam board first you need to cut out the wing and the four supports and the tail for the wing then take the wing flip it over and now you need to laminate the back with packing tape and you need to use like the really thin annoying stuff and what this does is it really reinforces the wing a little bit of weight a lot of strength so now what you're gonna do is flip the wing back over and Mark the wing into a four inch and a six inch section use a razor to lightly cut through the top of the paper and then remove the paper from the six inch section this allows you to fold the wing over without breaking it now position the cut along the edge of a table and fold over the wing then rub the crease with a rounded object to flatten the foam of it this will allow the foam to Bend better and create a smoother leading edge for the wing now fire up those hot glue guns cuz it's time to assemble the wing you want to place the first wing support about a half inch away from the crease in the way then put wing support number two right on top of the first one and put a carbon fiber arrow behind it this really increases the rigidity of the wing and you pretty much need it if you're gonna shoot this off of a potato cannon next just add some glue to the top of the wing fold it over and hold it tight so the wing doesn't bulge in this shape in any way so now if you're gonna watch this flight off of a potato cannon you need to a way to launch it off the potato cannon so this is what we're going to do we're gonna use a cardboard tube and it's just gonna slip right over the barrel of the potato cannon now you're probably not lucky enough to get a cardboard tube that perfectly fits over the barrel all right so here you go you can tell the pipe doesn't really fit perfectly through the cardboard so what we're gonna do is cut it right down the middle and then glue it together and tape it together till it fits perfectly you're right over into now it's time to add a nose cone to the plane and I've included a 3d printable file on my website that's perfectly sized for a one inch PVC barrel so you can just pop it right in there at the end of the tube now if you don't have a 3d printer or donor that's 2 1 it's pretty simple just to get a bunch of junk and jam it into the end of the tube and tape it up so it seals up good so you're gonna just take this and you're gonna make sure that the the front of the tube is sticking out like about an inch now we need to make the tail for the plane which is pretty simple you can use a carbon fiber arrow which is preferable because they're extremely stiff they don't bend at all but you can also use a dowel now we're gonna glue the tail to the arrow shaft so a little trick I found to help the foam keep its shape is to kind of use a piece of tape like this just like that and then what you want to do is put some glue right in the little notch there and then put it on the planet just like that so if you don't have a GoPro don't worry you can still use something to balance the glider I'm using a battery and that really works perfectly it's the perfect weight and anyway even if you are using a GoPro or you aren't what you need to do is balance the glider make sure that the center of gravity is perfect so you want to put your finger on the front third of the plane like this and hold it out to make sure that the glider is even because if the nose is too heavy it'll look like that and it'll do a nosedive when you shoot it and if it's tail-heavy it'll look like that and it'll just do flips when you throw it and just throw it around a little bit to make sure you get a nice flight alright now that we got all the planes built let's load up the car and test them out [Music] yes it was beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] Wow oh my god Joe that was so good look at it oh it's bring on the water [Music] yes that was such a good fly [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] alright guys while I've had a ton of fun building these planes and even more fun flying them I think you guys will have a blast building and flying them too so if you do build these let me know share some pictures on my website or tag me on Instagram I'd love to see it see you guys next time bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: TheBackyardScientist

Views: 1,621,895

Rating: 4.944159 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, Foam Glider, Cannon Glider, Cannon Powered Glider

Id: d6L5btPRHq8

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RustedBlade7]

u/wrenulator

Pretty please ♥