I’m going to make another one out of my SpinBrush and race them.

In honor of summer ending, I thought I’d do a really stupid experiment, just like I used to back in my basic school days.

After gutting and toss what was left of the old, broken Gateway (see my Sheba Class computer dossier for more info on that thing), I had a few parts left over. One of the things I took was the 80mm fan from its power supply. I figured “Hey, free case fan!”

Sadly, even though it had a standard power connector, anyone not in a hurry to strip everything from a case before tossing it would realize instantly that the cable was too short, and that using a fan that had already been going strong for over 6 years was probably a bad idea. Not only that, but dust had chemically bonded with the blades and motor. What to do?

I had an idea to build a boat. There were a few steps to doing this. First, I had to make sure I could run the thing off a battery at decent speed. It was meant for 12 volts, obviously. I charged up my NiMH 9 volt and stuck it to the now-stripped wires, and the thing spun up quite nicely…much faster and with more airflow than I expected.

Next, I had to see if it would work in water. At first, I put it in the sink in my bathroom and just started the water, trying to fill up the bowl slowly. This resulted in a few sprays of some really nasty water at me and the bathroom wall as it was revealed that the dust was slightly less attached to the blades than I thought. After cleaning that up, I started the experiment again, this time with the water entering the sink slightly faster. I was entirely sure that once enough spray got into the (entirely exposed) fan motor, it would short out and that would be that. Instead, the damn thing just kept going until the motor itself was halfway underwater.

Deciding to go for broke, I removed the fan again, and filled the sink up almost completely. I was going to gently lower it in, but as soon as the blades touched the water, it sucked itself out of my hands right to the bottom of the sink, where it just kept spinning, laughing at me. This is where I took my first video.
The fan on the bottom of my sink.
For the next step, I had to have a tub. My bathroom only has a shower. It was time to go upstairs, strap the fan to something floaty, and stick it in the giant Sex Tub. The entire process took a few seconds, once I decided that the old Gatorade bottle was the true boat I needed. Pictures below, in glorious 1600×1200, so you’ll need to click the links. Notice that the wires to the battery are still unattached. No reason to waste precious energy while doing nothing! Especially since I didn’t fully charge the battery in the first place…*cough*

The boat in profile.
The boat head on.
Next up…the experiment. As you can see, there’s nothing to counter the torque of the fan, so I fully expected the boat to just glide along the side of the tub. The battery was also slowing down a bit at this point, so even though you can hear it’s angry entry into the tub, the extra energy required to move the blades through water causes it to slow down rapidly in the water…right until the moment when it stops moving at all. I made the mistake of using warm water this time, you see…which ate through the adhesive very quickly. Thus, at the end of the video, right after the wires come lose, you can watch the boat give birth to it’s own battery. Enjoy!

The grand boating experiment!