Linear Air Trough

The construction and operation of a linear air trough, a device for floating small rectangular blocks (called gliders) on an air film, is described. The apparatus is useful for demonstrations and laboratory study of one-dimensional particle mechanics. The very small friction that is present is due to the viscosity of the air film, and causes the speed of a glider to decay with a time constant of the order of a few hundred seconds. A type of bumper has been designed which yields a coefficient of restitution greater than 0.99. Ten of these air troughs have been used in a student laboratory for a year, and have proved quite successful in experiments involving Newton's laws, collisions, damped harmonic motion, and motion on an incline