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Vacuum or Atmosphere powered car? (Patreon)

Published:
2018-12-15 11:07:57
Imported:
2026-06

Content

I've been working on a small car that is powered by pulling a vacuum inside of a syringe and using it as a pneumatic spring. This then drives the wheels in the same way a mouse trap car works. 

Here is a demo video of it working: https://youtu.be/I4fbJHpS3E0

As fluids (air) flow from high pressure zones to low pressure zones, it's actually the atmosphere pushing the piston towards the nozzle of the syringe rather than the vacuum sucking. So technically this is an atmosphere powered car right?

My view is that it stores energy in the atmosphere by theoretically raising the atmosphere by a minuscule (immeasurable) amount, therefore increasing the gravitational potential energy of the atmosphere? Same as if you were to expand a syringe in a small tub of water, the water level would rise. So what's your view, is it vacuum powered or atmosphere powered?

One last thing, that syringe in the video is 5ml in volume and I have a 100ml syringe waiting for a radio controlled car version! Which according to my calculations, should be able to drive about 300m distance!



Comments

Anders Haglund

It's potential energy difference powered. 😁

Jonathan Charnas

I say vacuum powered car because what your creating is a vacuum, not an atmosphere, but that's my personal reasoning

Anonymous

There's no power in a vacuum. The power is coming from the pressure of air.

Anonymous

Definitely an atmospheric powered vehicle. What you are doing when you do work to creat the vacuum is to store a fixed amount of potential energy in the atmosphere - analogous to raising a weight. When you let go of the weight i.e. release the vacuum, you recover the stored energy (less efficiency losses, which is where it gets complicated). This is not a new idea of course. Look up Atmospheric Railway on Wikipedia for a full explanation. It puzzles me why such a brilliant engineer as I K Brunel could not see the tremendous shortcomings of this system and wasted so much of his valuable time and energy on it before giving up.

Jonathon Mah

Raising the pressure of the atmosphere is irrelevant - it would work the same if you teleported the air from the syringe into some other sealed container. “Atmosphere powered” seems more correct. “Air powered” applies too, just in the opposite polarity of your compressed air car. Decompressed air car? :-)

Jeff LaHay
>>18037733

And technically to say “vacuum” it has to be “a space entirely devoid of all matter” as to which a syringe is not. It’s definitely the atmospheric pressure importing the energy to the device

Anonymous

It’s all about conservation of energy. You do work with your muscles when you pull out the syringe against air pressure (which admittedly you increase by only an infinitesimal amount). You get the work back (minus smal losses such as friction) when you allow the air to refill the vacuum. As per Lord Rutherford's classic remark: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting“.

Anonymous

I have no idea of that subject but from a noob perspective vacuum powered makes a cooler title

Chris Silvia

If you do it in a sealed room, I think that it's equally fair to say Vacuum Powered Vs. Atmosphere Powered

Anonymous

For me both names are valid, because it is just the direction from where you look at the system. Also, an electric car is not moving because of the electricity but because of magnetic forces which are turned into rotational energy - but no one would call a Tesla a magnetic car... So I think you have "range" for naming your atmovac...