Homemade Science with Bruce Yeany | Lifting a car with a vacuum cleaner and a tarp // Demonstration of Pressure @YeanyScience | Uploaded July 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
I've always thought that air lift bags were similar in behavior to simple machines in their ability to transform small amount of pressure into extremely large amounts of force. Usually air bags are smaller and made of very tough rip resistant fabrics and can be pressurized with 50 to 125 PSI to exert thousands of pounds of force. I'd like to show the inverse also hold true in using a small amount of pressure but spread over a very large area can also generate thousands of pounds of force. In this video my challenge is to lift a 5000 pound (2268 kilograms) car just using the exhaust of a small shop vacuum cleaner. The pressure exerted by this machine is less than one PSI or 6.9 kpa. However, this demonstration only requires about .3PSI (2kpa) to be successful. The small pressure applied to the whole undercarriage of the vehicle which measures about 118 square feet (10.5 square meters) is enough to lift the car completely off the ground.
The car used in this demonstration is a 1978 Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon. Most common questions asked: engine is a 305 cu in., it does not have a third seat in the back. I've always loved stations wagons and owned this one for about 12 years, it is pretty much all original. Drives much different than today's SUV, feels more like a boat than a car. Does occasionally go to car shows and has also been to several science conferences where I've given workshops, it can hold quite a lot of science equipment when needed.
I've always thought that air lift bags were similar in behavior to simple machines in their ability to transform small amount of pressure into extremely large amounts of force. Usually air bags are smaller and made of very tough rip resistant fabrics and can be pressurized with 50 to 125 PSI to exert thousands of pounds of force. I'd like to show the inverse also hold true in using a small amount of pressure but spread over a very large area can also generate thousands of pounds of force. In this video my challenge is to lift a 5000 pound (2268 kilograms) car just using the exhaust of a small shop vacuum cleaner. The pressure exerted by this machine is less than one PSI or 6.9 kpa. However, this demonstration only requires about .3PSI (2kpa) to be successful. The small pressure applied to the whole undercarriage of the vehicle which measures about 118 square feet (10.5 square meters) is enough to lift the car completely off the ground.
The car used in this demonstration is a 1978 Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon. Most common questions asked: engine is a 305 cu in., it does not have a third seat in the back. I've always loved stations wagons and owned this one for about 12 years, it is pretty much all original. Drives much different than today's SUV, feels more like a boat than a car. Does occasionally go to car shows and has also been to several science conferences where I've given workshops, it can hold quite a lot of science equipment when needed.
