Wind Powered Car (3D Printed)

hi derek been a fan of yours for a long time i actually started my youtube channel because of the video you posted about gyroscopic procession i thought i could explain it better than you i couldn't it was embarrassing and a bad video i should probably learn from my mistakes but here we are again a few weeks ago you posted a video about a special car and for once i think i can explain it better than you i probably can't i'll probably embarrass myself again and for that i just want to tell you this video was brought to you by blinkist a few weeks ago derek posted a video about a car that can go faster than the wind while being pushed by nothing else than the wind now this seems impossible to me and if it doesn't seem impossible to you allow me to illustrate the problem with a very shitty analogy imagine you have a glass and now imagine that glass is filled with water now if i push the glass it turns into wine but if i keep on pushing it it gains speed the speed that is exactly the same as my finger why well it's my finger that is pushing it if my finger stops pushing it the cup stops then how can it be that the car can go faster than the wind since the wind is like my finger and is pushing it well that's not exactly the case because in the case of the car it's not really a force but momentum what is momentum well i'm glad you asked this is not bad wine actually now i want to explain momentum in the most intuitive way possible and what better way to explain momentum than guns hello anthexia my name is vlad i am a russian tomato gangster and also natalia's lover you killed my one true love and by mafia laws now that means i have to kill you in a horrible and painful way way way way is daddy gone anyway moving on momentum relates the mass and velocity of an object and just like energy momentum is always conserved which means that if a small object at high speed collides with a big object standing still the small object will transfer momentum to the big one and make it move at a slower speed since the big one is more massive yep that's where the word comes from it means it has a lot of mass it's also a very scientific way of calling someone fat to demonstrate how this effect is applied on a sale i 3d printed a car with a metal sail and shot it with plastic bullet we only do punk rock science here okay airsoft sail car test one have you clicked that katrina yes as you can see as the bullets hit the sail they lose speed and transfer momentum to the car because the car is fatter than the bullet it moves slowly when compared with the speedy projectiles with the wind is somehow the same but instead of plastic bullet you have micro bullets of air we like to call atoms now you're probably thinking in you idiot it doesn't matter if it's momentum and not a force because once the car reaches the same speed as the wind the atoms are no longer colliding with the sail so it's all the same and you're right that's true i can't refute it but luckily for us there's more ways in which the wind can push the car one of them is drag in fluid dynamics drag is a resistance force caused by flow of a fluid around an object this happens for several reasons but normally the most significant one is pressure drag pressure drag happens when a fluid is forced to change direction because of an object and because of inertia cannot contour the entire object this creates an area with almost no fluid and low pressure which is a fancy way of saying there's a vacuum and that sucks in most cases drag is a bad thing but because the sail car is moving in the same direction as the wind drag is actually helping okay i know what you're about to tell me in texas there is no drag once the car reaches the same speed as the wind because there's no relative motion between the two yeah drag is also not the magic force that accelerates the car past wind speed which makes me wonder is it even possible well apparently is not only possible but very common sailboats do it all the time and the way they do it is by using the dark arts of trigonometry if you have the wind hitting an angled sail in this direction by the time the wind traveled this much the boat traveled this much steve mold made a brilliant video explaining this you should probably check it out so angled sails do the trick but only if you're not going in the same direction as the wind and in this case that's kind of the point to find success you need to trick the wind into thinking you're not going in the same direction as itself and to do that you need a propeller the car built by rick cavallaro sails faster than the wind because it uses a propeller as a rotating sail i didn't really understand how the propeller was helping the car go faster than the wind and i think the primary reason for that is that i didn't really understand how propellers work rotating propellers are commonly used to push aircrafts forward they do this using two different ways the first one is by pushing air backwards like you would push water while rowing in a canoe for every action there's a reaction if you push air backwards as a result you also push yourself forward the second wave requires a more efficient shape for the blade an airfoil propellers are basically rotating airplane wings and airplane wings use a special shape called airfoil which is a shape used to promote lift this shape does this because it has a longer length in the upside and the shorter length in the downside this forces the wind to flow faster over the wing and faster flow has lower pressure which means the wing is getting sucked up at this point in time i needed more than abstract thinking to really understand this so i decided to 3d print my own car [Music] so [Music] sponsor time 3d modeling is boring it's not always boring of course but most of the time it's boring i mean nobody likes the 3d model screws to fill the void of interest i like to listen to podcasts and audio books and the tool that i use for that is blinkist blinkist is an app that you can install on your phone to listen to podcasts and audiobooks there are condensed into blinks so you can enjoy the essential information of the book in the limited amount of time that you have right now i'm listening to the 12 rules for life by jordan b peterson it's much more than a motivational book and i highly respect professor peterson i personally recommend you this book to read if you want to follow my advice the first 100 people to use the link www.blinkies.comtexa will get one week of unlimited access to the app and also 25 discount if you go for the full membership don't waste time use this valuable tool to entertain yourself and learn while you work back to the video so in a simple way these are the mechanics of how the car should work the wind hits the car from behind what pushes the car forward this makes the wheels rotate and because the wheels are geared to the propeller in a way that makes the propeller push air backwards the propeller acts as a rotating sail that accelerates the car further in theory let's see if that's actually true to test the car i use the treadmill my first concern was to see if the propeller could actually generate enough thrust to beat the friction from the ground okay this is the first test with the coil let's see if it can do it katrina hit it so if i let go it goes away okay i think we need to go faster katrina is at five kilometers per hour yes let's try again nope still going backwards so let's go max b eight kilometers per hour [Music] not working why is it not working come on little guy okay so the propeller is not generating thrust enough for the car to go faster than the thread mill uh anyway i'm to try with some wind behind the car to see if it helps let's try that you want to move oh it's just not enough this propeller is not it's not efficient i think it's because it's too thin so the propeller was neither working as a sail or a propeller and that has to do with poor design on my part apparently the pitch of the blade is very important so to make my life easier i 3d printed a propeller in which i can adjust the pitch manually and now i have the new propeller in which i can adjust the pitch let's try to do that i think it's working better it takes longer but i don't know maybe it's just the speed can you increase the speed [Music] i think it's a good idea to test it with the wind you want to go oh wait that's some reaction okay that's good okay so let's do a higher speed oh yeah i can feel it look yep okay katrina give me some speed low setting speed oh boy okay give me more speed let's go okay stop there okay oh he wants to go forward that's for sure [Music] look that's amazing so this time the propeller worked well as a sail but that's only because i used a very fine pitch what turns the propeller into a blunt object that the wind can smash into if i want it to go faster than the wind i actually need it to work as a propeller and generate some thrust for my next propeller i designed the fixed pitch propeller using the angles that worked better for the adjustable one and instead of 3d printing the prop in resin that is too heavy i use this special filament that has the density of foam and is really light this propeller worked pretty well and even with almost no wind and the treadmill at full power would accelerate very well [Music] in this point of the video i want to share with you my understanding of how the propeller sail car can go faster than the wind in the beginning the car is standing still and gets hit by the wind at this stage the prop works like a sail and uses the wind to push the car forward it's very important to mention that the reason why the propeller works so well as a sail is because he's rotating in the opposite way the wind wants to turn it because of that the relative speed at which the air hits the blades is very high think of it in this way if clara throws a tomato at my face while i'm standing still the speed at which the tomato collides with me is exactly the speed at which the tomato was traveling but if clara throws a tomato at me while i'm running in the opposite direction the tomato is traveling the impact is much greater because you have to add up the tomato speed and my speed relative speed the sail effect can only take the car to the speed of the wind but it's very important for me to say that the wind will keep the car going at the same speed as long as there's no ridiculous amount of friction this is important because as long as the sail effect keeps the car at the same speed as the wind the propeller effect takes care of the rest let's talk about rotation like i said the wheels of the car are geared to the propeller which means that for each rotation the wheel's complete the propeller completes one as well this is not true for the big car on directx video because the prop on that car only completes half a rotation for each wheel rotation but as you will see in a moment this is not really relevant even though they both complete a rotation because the prop has a bigger diameter the distance traveled by most of the prop is significantly bigger than the one traveled by the wheels which also means the speed at which the blades of the prop go through the air is much higher even if the car is only traveling forward at the same speed as the wind this is true even if the propeller only does half a rotation with the blades going through the air at a high linear speed lift kicks in and creates a low pressure over the wing but because in this case the wing is a blade on a prop and over the wing is actually forward the prop sucks the car forward by creating a low pressure and slowing down the wind ahead i think this is a coherent explanation of how the car can go faster than the wind mechanically speaking but where is the extra energy coming from well it comes from the air of course air as any fluid has two types of energy kinetic energy that comes from its speed and potential energy that in this case comes from pressure by creating a low pressure ahead the prop generates a pressure difference that accelerates the car forward now the last important question to be answered is how is this not free energy by my logic the car will accelerate forever no this is not free energy once the car reaches a certain speed drag will no longer be its friend and the pressure difference that is generated by the propeller will be cancelled by the air flowing backwards now i can imagine that a lot of you are going to disagree with me on this and that's fine that's the reason why i created my own design of the car if you think i'm wrong print the car do your own experiment and prove me wrong just because some youtuber like me or derek says things need to be one way it doesn't mean you have to believe it the fun part of science is experimenting and getting to your own conclusions and if your conclusion is that my explanation is rubbish well i'm curious to see what the right answer looks like so please share it with me and the rest of the internet like i said before i've been a fan of derek's videos for a long time they ignited my passion for engineering and science and if it wasn't for him i would probably never started this youtube channel so for that like i said in the beginning of the video i want to tell you thank you wait why are you blipping me i'm only saying thank you thank you derek but also because of this video i almost had a mental breakdown and for that derek thank you oh right the printer giveaway um on my last video i gave away a 3d printer to the most liked comments suggesting a theme for a feature video the winner was honor k and he suggested that i could print a uav rocket well you guys know that here rockets are always in the menu if you also want to win a 3d printer all you need to do is subscribe to the channel leave a like on this video and post a comment suggesting a theme for a future video the most liked comment will receive a brand new 3d printer also i'm making a portuguese voice reveal at half a million subs so don't forget to subscribe well this is everything for today i hope you enjoyed the video and remember tomatoes are disgusting see ya [Music] so you

Channel: Integza

Views: 592,955

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Id: QHJka4_ZioU

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021