Air cannon shoots bottle at Mach1 (speed of sound)

This is an air launcher I made to shoot tennis balls. Luckily empty coke bottles fit nicely in the barrel. At 100psi it fired an empty coke bottle at 763mph, 2mph over the speed of sound.

Note how the backstop box flies away. If the MDF board was held ridgid, the damage would have been significantly higher.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• cannon
• air
• pneumatic
• spudgun
• spud
• potato
• combustion
• uksgc
• spudfiles
• launcher
• bottle
• mach1
• mach

[Gippetos]

Certainly packs a punch, but I do believe that the muzzle blast is interfering with your chrony. Check your owners manual to be sure, but mine says 5 feet minimum for a .22lr. I think you've got more muzzle blast than that. :)

[hoarp001]

Well possibly. You would think that if the blast was going this fast, then the bottle would be as well.

I have borrowed a High speed camera (up to 1.4 million frames a second) so will do some mythbusters style testing to see the true speed.

[fruitpoops]

Certainly not 1.4 million frames per second, maybe 1400.

[hoarp001]

No, 1.4 million frames per second.

Vision Research Phantom v710. Do some googling.

[fruitpoops]

I know it's possible, Vision Research isn't the first company to produce a camera with that kind of capability. But the resolution will be absolute shit, and virtually unusable.

...

I did some googling, resoultion at 1.4 million fps = 128x8!

[hoarp001]

Yes, the resolution is low, but the speeds we shoot at, we are using 50,000fps. Your first post said certainly not 1.4million FPS, and that camera certainly is capeable of 1.4million fps, weather you can see what your shooting or not!

[Oetzrock]

N scheiss is das schallgeschwindigkeit nicht mit PVC junge

[snowyphil65]

@hoarp001 not true about the gasses, consider that its building a pressure wave behind the bottle and as it comes out it wants to expand and that it does rather rapidly, some of the gasses could be traveling faster than the bottle, would love to see that super slow mo

[PressuredAirCannon]

@ daltonultra, totally agreed.

Also, if it was going that fast, then that wimpy little piece of plywood would have done almost nothing to stop the bottle.... It would have gone clean thru the wood, as well as the wall behind it.

Not even close to the speed of sound.

[daltonultra]

Sorry, no, you weren't even close to the speed of sound. Not at 100psi. Not with ANY pressure a PVC air cannon can hold. Guys have been trying it for a long time with steel, and nobody has shown any conclusive proof that they've done it with pressures as high as 600psi. Besides, if you DID mange to get a projectile that size up to supersonic, the muzzle blast inside a room would pop your eardrums like soap bubbles.

[13098519]

lol for having it aimed at the door... can you imagine someone walking in at the wrong moment...

[headphones222]

I am also in the U.K., looking to get into spud guns, pneumatic is obviously the way to go, I live just outside high wycombe, where can I get copper piping and QEV's ect??

I noticed your cannon was platic?

[frog45678]

the chrony is in the dark so to speak ,im sorry but i think the shot was 400 fps tops. unless u had the bottle packed with lead. I dont think nasa could get a bottle moving 1150fps.. sorry,good video though

[fruitpoops]

Although it may be capable, the resolution is crap, which is my qualm. they are basically using the number as a selling-point