Anyone actually ever try to build this?

[Snagglefoot]

Let’s build one. Start with a lithium battery vacuum cleaner. Plug the hose to the discharge. Make a manifold and and send 3 hoses and attach them to a upside down 5 gallon buckets. I’ll measure the top of a bucket and get right back.

OK, the top of the buckets are 12 inches in diameter and have a cross sectional area of 113 square inches x 3 upside down buckets = 339 square inches, If you had some sort of flexible seal that would keep them from leaking off you would need an air pressure of 200 lbs/ 339 square inches = 0.6 psi.

So if the blower side of the vacuum cleaner could blow at 1 psi and somehow it would keep the air from leaking off, you would indeed levitate a total of 200 lbs.

 

[Snagglefoot]

I travelled by hovercraft from Shanghai, China to Hong Kong back in 1986. It looked like this one.

 

[Mazomopar]

I bet Big Oil or the Big Three got wind of it and made the PTA members an offer they couldn't refuse

 

[AZjeff]

There's an interesting YouTube channel, Fireball Tool, one of the things the guy does is build machines from Pop Mechanics. He's a darn talented fabricator.

 

[PandaBear]

I travelled by hovercraft from Shanghai, China to Hong Kong back in 1986. It looked like this one.

View attachment 130680

Also boats from Hong Kong to Macau for gamblers.

 

[Dave Sherman]

I remember that ad. I can't say I've built one of those, but my physics teacher in high school built one of his own design that you could ride on. Built it from a round piece of plywood and some heavy plastic sheeting tacked to it with holes cut in it. He had a small shop vac that powered it, but you could sit on the board, stick the hose in the exhaust side of the shop vac, and stick the end in a hole in the plywood. We actually used it in labs where a spring scale was attached to it, one person rode on it, one person tugged on the spring scale, and a couple others played out a long extension cord as it glided down the hallway. The day I had that lab, the school superintendent was visiting, and when he saw it he thought that was so cool and asked if he could take a ride on it!

 

[aquariuscsm]

The "Float on Air" advertisment was often near this advertisement:
View attachment 130679

What exactly were these? Some kind of small fish?

 

[carviewsonic]

What exactly were these? Some kind of small fish?

My sister and I split the cost and ordered sea monkeys 50 years ago. They looked nothing like monkeys, they looked like some kind of larvae. I don't think we had them for more than a day once they hatched, Mom probably flushed 'em. Least missed pets of all time.
Googled it -
'a hybrid breed of brine shrimp called Artemia NYOS'.
Hopefully they didn't destroy an ecosystem when they were flushed

 

[Snagglefoot]

What exactly were these? Some kind of small fish?

Shrimp. They hatched from the dry eggs. Whoops. Carviewsonic beat me.

 

[Owen Lucas]

I bought the instructions on how to build a CO2 laser in Popular Mechanics, I think it was from a place called Information Unlimited. Once I read the plans and the equipment needed that was the end of the project. Vacuum pumps, lenses, front surface mirrors, transformers, all above my head as a kid.

 

[twouvakind]

"If you had some sort of flexible seal that would keep them from leaking off".

 

[RhondaHonda]

I remember those ads, maybe in Boys Life or Field and Stream. I was born in the early 80s for reference.

 

[zray1]

Also boats from Hong Kong to Macau for gamblers.

That’s the one I took in 1980.

 

[chrlsful]

The reason why I hate small towns.

'S OK as our small town (pop of 2K) was opposite (early '60s - late 70s).
Lived in a twn of 86 and that was very mean.