I have two fans in my classroom. One's a big, cyclone fan, the kind of box fan that's not actually in a square housing and that tilts back and forth, the blades sitting just above the floor. The other one's a very standard, very square, old-school box fan.I use the two fans whenever the lack of ventilation drives the students' complaints to a level that I can't tolerate or when our giant ice-making machine doesn't hit the high efficiencies that it must've hit before the school was expanded well beyond its capacity.
The fans push air, and that's all I've ever asked for from them. And I've never noticed that my fans did anything other than spin a few blades, push some air, and make it impossible for my students to hear anything that I'm saying or that they're discussing. The only real change I've ever wanted in fan design is a significant drop in noise level.
So with demands like mine being placed on the emerging fan industry, Dyson has introduced the Air Multiplier, a fan without blades.Yeah, without blades. The fan doesn't have any blades to spin and push the air, to create what the Dyson website calls - and shows via video - choppy airflow. Their new magic machine provides smooth airflow.
Thank heaven they've finally solved the problem of choppy airflow. Heaven only knows that I've been tired of the choppy airflow coming out of my fans. How it chops and buffets my students. They're always complaining about the choppiness and buffeting.
I will say that the science involved in making a fan without blades is pretty cool (in spite of the fact that it actually has blades in its base to really move the air.) It pushes the air through the big hoop and out a small opening - big amount, small opening = more speed - dragging even more air along for the party. It's some kind of Bernoulli's Principle thing.
Cool, yes.
Expensive, yes.
Something I desperately want to see in person, hell yes.
Something I'm going to buy, not a frickin' chance.
6 comments:
I'd imagine that this wouldn't be that difficult to build. I'd bet the tech department could build a functional version pretty easily.
It has a 200mm fan in it's base. It's still a fan, just with a thinner area to expell air. Haha. Gizmodo had it on their site last week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A3IM06xgr0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8he8afjQyd8
That's kind of cool, Joey, but why do those links have Michael Palin explaining the 'fan'?
Andrew, that would be very cool to see. I'll ask Simpson and Lien.
Slug - did Gizmodo seem impressed or not?
didnt even notice that... haha twins.
the hardest part of making one would be if you actually wanted to use the impeller design instead of just a few 200 mm computer case fans in the base. The big loopy tube shouldn't be too terrible to design out of two pieces, one for inner airfoil and one outer a/f, then connect them at the trailing edge (which after a few timely pauses of the youtube video, looks like exactly what they did... maybe i am catching on to this whole engineering thing after all...)
Ya, they seemed to enjoy it. They said the same thing about the price, pretty much. I might end up making one if I get bored. It's a nice thought.
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