"Bernoulli" Levitation

Abstract

"Bernoulli" levitation is the basis of many popular counter-intuitive physics demonstrations. However, few of these lend themselves to a quantitative description without recourse to computational fluid dynamics. Levitation of a flat plate is the exception, and we present here a straightforward analysis which illustrates several principles of fluid mechanics in a pedagogically useful way.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Am. J. Phy