Whiz-Around Hovercraft !
Introducing The
What is a hovercraft
The hovercraft is the pinnacle of all terrain transportation. It is simple and extremely manouvarable around obstacles and can be made to transport hundreds of people in a fraction of the time taken of different methods of transportation such as, cars and ships. Adding to these extra assets, insted of transfering to another vehicle, the hovercraft can simply glide over the surface ! These characteristics make the hovercraft almost unstoppable and it is now your turn to make one and play around with this cool machiene !
What is this all about ?
The idea of this procedure is to show how a basic version of a hovercraft works and also to give an idea of how and why it works and what makes it tick
Utensils/ apparatus/ materials
- A disk or cd with a hole in the middle
- A reausable pop cap
- A rubber band
- A glue gun with a glue stick/ solid glue
- A balloon (approximately 15 cm when fully inflated)/( party balloons)
- 75g of blu/glu tack
Instructions:
1. To start the construction of the hovercraft base, take the cd disk or disk and place it on a table or anything that has a flat surface. Carefully with the shiny/ glistening side down or the hovercraft will not work properly and will not move.
2. Secondly with the base laid out, grab the pop cap and the hot glue gun and paste it to the disk. To verify this, paste the flat side of the pop cap over the hole with the glue gun or the glue tac. After glue has dryed, get some more glue tack and paste it around the rim as before so seals all the remaining holes and gaps left out by the glue. If this step is to verbose ( to many words ) or beguiling ( tricky) ask and adult to supervise or help with this step.
3. After completing the hard parts, it is time to make the apparatus that makes this hovercraft what it is. Take the balloon and blow into it until it is the size of your head. Do not pump the balloon too much or it will explode ! Get the balloon carefully, and slip it over the bottle cap/pop cap, making sure the cap is in the closed postition. ( Push cap down on bottle cap to close)
4. The final step is to put the rubber band over the balloon neck to secure it onto the bottle cap. After you have done that, it is time to test the hovercraft. Open the bottle cap and it should hover about 2-4mm off the surface, give it a push and this amazing hovercraft will glide across the surface like the real deal.
How it works ?
So how does it work ? Thats the all important question. The large transport hovercrafts works by a giagantic fan, which pushes the craft and the big rubber balloon, which every component is attached to. Our hovercraft is the same thing exept that it doesn 't have a fan or a big balloon. The air escaping creates an "air cushion". This is what makes the hovercraft "magicaly" hover and beacase of this, this craft can easily mover and maybe even better than the real thing !