Particles strike the lateral sides equally often, so there's no net push sideways.īut along the longitudinal axis, there's only one wall to strike, and the particles push the rocket forward as they ricochet and escape out the open end.īut if rockets did have arms, they could just as easily use baseballs as propellant without igniting anything. Well, in conventional rockets, that's where the ignition comes in.Īs the rocket's propellant oxidizes, chemical bond energy is released, raising its temperature and causing it to expand until it becomes a gas of particles bouncing off the walls of the combustion chamber. Now if you push the ball forward hard, the ball also pushes backward on you, giving you and the skateboard a backward velocity in the process.įundamentally, that's how a rocket works.Īs it throws fuel in one direction, the fuel pushes back on the rocket to accelerate in the opposite direction. In this picture, you represent the rocket and the ball represents the fuel. Imagine standing on a skateboard holding something really heavy, like a bowling ball. Rockets do not have to ignite or burn fuel in order to achieve propulsion. Let's start with rockets, actually, because there's a common misconception I want to clear up from the start.
#CHARLES ROCKET ON FARTING LICENSE#
If space suits didn't put a firm barrier between you and the outside environment, space would kill you.īut for the sake of this episode, let's take some biological license and pretend you could survive without a suit, or if you prefer, pretend you have a suit with a special valve that would allow you to pass gas into the vacuum of space.Ĭould you then propel yourself with farts?Īnd if you could, how fast could they make you go?īefore we can analyze the concept of a fart rocket, we need to understand the mechanics of those two ingredients separately, farts and rockets.
You know you've thought about it, and today we're going to answer it.
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