woodchurch science

perfectly timed for panto season, a team of scientists has come up with instructions for how to make a flying carpet. the magical device may owe more to walt disney than to the arabian nights, but it is not pure fantasy, according to researchers at harvard university.
no such carpet is going to ferry humans around, though. the researchers say that, to stay afloat in air, a sheet would need to be typically about 10 cm long, 0.1 mm thick, and vibrate at about 10hz with an amplitude of about 0.25mm. making a heavier carpet ‘fly’ is not absolutely forbidden by physics, but it would require such a powerful engine to drive vibrations that the researchers say “our computations and scaling laws suggest it will remain in the magical, mystical and virtual realm.” so don’t put your order in just yet…

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under ks3, ks4, news, physics, warren. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.