Okay something that has bugged me for a long time is how Zartan's Chameleon Swamp Skier works. So from the look of the vehicle it basically operates like a hydrofoil. The main body houses a small jet engine that pushes the craft through the water and up onto the front and back skis and it zips along the surface of the water. We've seen it in action like this in the cartoon.



What bothers me though is that there doesn't appear to be any structure or mechanism that allows it to float when its not moving. In the cartoon when they were stopped and tied up to the dock (as I recall) they floated on the skis as though the skis were pontoons, which clearly they aren't unless they are made of some magical lighter than air material.



Also the underside of the body is just the outer housing of the jet engine and doesn't appear to have any kind of hull wrapped around it. Is the body frame also made of the same magical hover metal as the skis?



I know that G.I. Joe is full of strange and unbelievable concepts and that a lot of it shouldn't work in the real world. But this vehicle, one of my favorites as a kid, just defies the laws of physics in extraordinarily blatant ways. I could totally see this functioning as a land vehicle, skating along snow like a fancy jet powered snowmobile. But in the water when it isn't moving this thing should sink like a rock.

Any thoughts?

_________________

I always figured the "swamp" part of it was what was important. When stationary, it may sink a bit, but the stereotypical swamp of cartoons and movies is only about 6" deep. That would have it sinking to just about the bottom of the engine. Then as he fires it up and takes off, it'd lift to the surface. Try to take it out on a lake, deep river, or ocean, and it'd just sink.

And this thread led me to google, which turned up this interesting article from days gone by.

Surface tension is the tendency for the surface of a liquid to act like a stretched membrane or piece of rubber. The cohesive forces work to bring the molecules on the interior of the liquid to the exterior surface. If you want to get scientific, surface tension is numerically equal to the force acting at right angles to a line of unit length that is lying on the surface and is called Constant of Capillarity and is represented by the symbol T. Capillarity is the interaction between contacting surfaces of a liquid and a solid that distorts the liquid surface from a planar, flat or two-dimensional, shape to concave or convex.

Cohesion is the attraction of molecules by which the elements of the body are held together. Water has the highest cohesive force of any liquid except that of mercury. At the air-water interface, the water molecules are H-bonded to one another and to the molecules below the surface. This makes the water behave as though it were coated with an invisible film.

For the Chameleon, this adhesion is relevant because the skis are covered with a waxy, superhydrophobic compound on the surface that repels water. Because the ski is not wetted by the water it stands on, it is in effect sitting upon the H-bonded layer of the water, and would continue to do so until acted upon by motion or an increase in weight.

Because the skis are not wetted by the water, the ski does not become submerged until the downward pull of gravity (when the rider jumps on it) exceeds the opposing vertical component of the water's surface tension*. The opposing component of surface tension is proportional to the perimeter of the ski where it is in contact with the water.

When the rider mounts the Chameleon, the superhydrophobic ski will be submerged, when gravity overcomes the resistant force of the hydrophobic coating's resistance against the water tension. Unless the Chameleon is immediately pushed forward with the thrust of the jet engine, it will sink.

However, due to the superhydrophobic coating, the ski has a axis-symmetric ventilated supercavitation effect, in effect creating a frictionless bubble around the ski allowing it to get up to speed extremely quickly with very little drag from the water. This enables the shape of the ski's airfoil to quickly rise it above the water. It is critical for the ski to operate on top of the water, because despite the supercavitation effect of the hydrophobic coating, the "leg" connection to the Chameleon body still produces drag, and would eventually push the skier down to the bottom as it accelerates.

For more information:

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/how-we-can ... nic-speed/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhydrophobic_coating

* this is "LASER BLAST".

**Actually this whole thing is junk science mixed with outright misinterpretations of science fact.

- R

_________________

Having been in a few swamps in my time, I figured he never stopped until he came up onto a muddy bank, and probably spent about half his travel time technically on ground and not water. It's not meant for long trips over open water, just quick escapes out the back of the hideout across the bayou to the other hideout.

Having said that, I made a swampskier out of a SW SpeederBike that did have mini-pontoons instead of flat skis.

_________________

Magnets.

_________________

4 hover boards......painted green. It's a Back to the Future crossover vehicle.

_________________

The cartoon also features Trouble Bubbles, radiated Snake Eyes, a man created from the dead tissue of centuries old rulers, and a used car salesman that became such a national threat an entire unit was formed to combat his thrown together army. In that context, I would believe the USS Flagg could drive down Wall Street.

_________________

Mine always worked by me kinda pushing it around with my hand. Usually my right hand, but sometimes my left, if he was sneaking up on somebody. Then it would kind if fall apart and get set aside, because reattaching that rear axle thing would wreck my play flow.

_________________

How does the Swamp Skier work?

Smoke and mirrors, because the guy riding it has all sorts of holographic doo-dads installed on it to make you think it can ski through swamps.

Actually, Zartan is a big fan of Disney's The Rescuers. He wanted a swamp mobile like Madame Medusa...

_________________

Black magic


http://www.deckjetwatercraft.com/ultranautics/wetbike.asp

_________________

Suburbanator, I had no idea that thing even existed. Updated the wiki. http://wiki.joecustoms.com/wiki/Real_Wo ... icles#1984

_________________

You have seen 'The Spy Who Loved Me', right?

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=ro ... d=0CBkQsAQ

_________________