SpudFiles

OK, so here's a random, out-there question for you.

For a summer project, I want to break the sound barrier with a golfball. What do you think is the easiest and most economic way to do this?

Peace,
Pete Zaria.

im going to say huge piston valve. unless you have the money to go supah or more than one sprinkler valve hooked up together to release more air. thats the economical part of it anyway. it would be hard to tell you how big you would need to go with it to make it break the sound barrier though.

Definately a Piston Pneumatic with 4" pipe... There's a calculator for this on the downloads page... I'm not sure which one but I found it once... It all matters on the Humidy, the Tempature, the Elevation, and the Feet Per Second the golf ball goes....

i thought it was impossible to do it with air, use helium

well the hybrid would be the easiest way to break the sound barrier, but its really dangerous to build one...I'd use a pneumatic

Either way, to break the sound barrier, 20' of 1.5" sdr-21 pipe sleeved in two lengths of 10' 2" sch. 80 pvc pipe coupled together would be a great barrel. Make sure to support the barrel well if you decide to use it

For the valve... maybe burst disk, because of the high flow. Supah valves are always a great (though expensive) option

Chamber wise, a 5-foot long 6" chamber will be plenty, if not too much.

These are just my thoughts

Good luck with it

i'd talk to my friend whose dad kinda runs a shop and see if me and my friend could work on a black powder cannon we've been wanting to build.

but its never gonna happen unless i get some ambition (which i never will).

I'd first find how many FPS you'd need to break Mach1 where you live then use GGDT to find a gun that would surpass that many FPS....

or just throw a golf ball as hard as you can (if youre as masculant as me). lol

Instead of building a gigantic cannon, can't you just build a sniper-size high-pressure rated cannon?

no, with normal air you cant easily break the sound barrier, it'd be much easier to build a helium cannon with a large chamber, large valve, and a really long barrel to harness all of the power possible

Helium is hard to get, isn't it? Unless you steal a tank from your local balloon store.

Not hard to get helium, and you said the reason, baloons.

its easy to get but i dont think i would want to buy a huge cylinder of it for that. you know it cant be cheap to buy that huge metal thing. i cant think of any other way to get it without like renting it.

costco sells helium tanks for kids parties, look for the blue tanks that look like propane tanks

How much do they cost and how big? Can you do a mix of compressed air and helium?