Fluidized sand is just normal sand with compressed) air being pumped in. It acts like a liquid until the air is shut off, then it acts like normal sand again.

Thanks @the first post comments. I thought it was interesting.

It does seem like a pretty spacy, impractical idea, but it is an interesting concept. I think the bit about the compressed air used to power air compressors is sort of a silly concept as well, but I believe that's why it has a limited range. If they worked with 100% efficiency it might be able to stay aloft indefinitely, but all of the thermodynamicists would be right out of a job if that happened.

Who the crap downvoted my comment above? I don't mind having things downvoted, but on what grounds was that done? Gee, suggesting that using compressed air to drive compressors to compress more air seeming to be a ridiculous method deserves a downvote?

Um, ok...

It's just an airship and glider. The only 'innovation' I see is adding a great amount of parasitic drag to the glider portion of the flight to run compressed air turbines. Overall it would require 'recharging' compressed air while landing. I can't imagine that it would be fun going any distance in this craft either as it looks to have very slow speeds. A glider that can go hundreds of miles sounds good, but would require hours in a descending glide.

>> ^CaptainPlanet:
motors driven by stored compressed air, compress air? confused.


Yeah, so was I, certainly doesn't seem like that'd work, surely it'd use more compressed air to run the compressors to compress the new air? Either that or you have a compressor that runs at over 100% efficiency.

motors driven by stored compressed air, compress air? confused.

I like how the heatsink was just resting on top of the CPU, and could just be lifted off without popping a clip of any kind.

They used the hole to fire a compressed air gun at the bottom of the chip, that's what the hole in the table was for.

Very fake.

I would like to see a little more about how the internals work. Does it have valves that are timed to drive the pistons? Are the pistons in fact individually driven by compressed air? In that case, getting the timing right would be impressive. If the air is just driving a flywheel that turns the drive shaft with it, that isn't quite so cool. Still cool though, just not quite so cool.

If he could connect it to some CO2 cartridges controlled by a throttle, and then put it into a car (a Lotus 49 please) so the whole thing was self-contained, THAT would be cool.

It's running on compressed air, if I'm not mistaken.

http://jalopnik.com/391187/lego-maniac-blows-minds-with-1440-rpm-mindstorms-v8-lego-engine

According to the authors youtube site, its using compressed air, pretty cool eh?!

In reply to this comment by Aemaeth:
This is a cool video, but how is it working if there's no combustion in the internal combustion engine? Oh well, it's a close replica, I guess.

When I was a kid, my friend next door had these little plastic rockets. You put a wad of baking soda, wrapped in tissue, into the base, poured the vinegar in and then jammed the rocket down on the base. Their range was around 20 or 30 feet. They didn't go quite as high as those plastic rockets you would fill half full of water and then hand pump compressed air into them, pull the trigger and whooooooossssssh. What happened to all the great toys? Damn video games.

Chinese finger trap is correct.

All they needed to do was introduce the shop compressed air into the side of the phone book. Or even a push-pull approach might work if you can unbind the pages and warp them up long enough.

To answer you question dystopian... it was good in a 'proto-evil dead' kind of way... and for Sam's hilarious portrayal of a Charles Manson-esque hippie sociopath... but it was also utter, utter cheese... and not the good gourmet kind, but the kind that is propelled from a can by compressed air.

I don't know if he's faking, but the technique is real.
Other odd ways of lighting a fire are with an ice lens, polishing the
bottom of a soda can to make a parabolic mirror, and a crude piston to suddenly compress air at ignition temperatures..

Just saw it yesterday. Loved it.

There were definitely very powerful overtones of "there's a lot more behind this, but you'll have to read the book," but all in all this was very well done.

That guy has got to be the creepiest killer I've seen on film in a long time. That tank he carried around was basically just compressed air. When he presses the trigger a sudden, enormous "explosion" of air shoots forth. In this case, it's implied it's the mentioned cattle murdering tool that also has a type of spike that is stored within and slides back & forth. Though to me it was entirely plausible (especially after repeatedly seeing the power of compressed air on Mythbusters) that it was simply the released air that was doing the damage.

Fantastic flick.