Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

We are in need of help designing the ion thruster model on the Van de Graff. We have built the second design that is supposed to be more robust and consistent, but we cannot get it to spin like the video. Is there anyone we can communicate with to get more help in the design? Thank you


Moderator note: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... wind-rotor

Hi there,

I'm not really sure about what could have gone wrong in your experiment without a photo, but there may be a few sources of potential error disallowing the copper pipe to spin. You want to make sure that both the hole size for the copper pipe is correct to allow for it to balance itself on the nail and for the two nails on each end of the copper pipe to balance themselves out. You also might want to make sure that the nail is standing straight upward so that the copper pipe will balance correctly. You can use more than one piece of electrical tape to accomplish this. Hope this helps.