The World's First Hoverboard
hendohover.com
The World's First Hoverboard
1–10 of 12 posts
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#2[deleted]
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#3I can't find any mention on the site to the surfaces it supports - turns out its powered by magnets, so only works on magnetic surfaces.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#4I can't find any mention on the site to the surfaces it supports - turns out its powered by magnets, so only works on magnetic surfaces.
Yeah they seem to hide that info well. The "Hover engine" is basically just a big electromagnet.
"Hendo hover board uses a magnetic field architecture to transmit electromagnetic energy. One downside here is that it needs a metal surface to hover"
That's a pretty big downside. Not only that but it seems to hover barely even an inch even with the giant metal surface and seems to just scrape the surface half the time they're standing on it in the video.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#5I can't find any mention on the site to the surfaces it supports - turns out its powered by magnets, so only works on magnetic surfaces.
That does seem kind of limiting, but realistically what else can we expect in the next ten years or so? At our current level of physics understanding, a board must either interact with fields that most of the boarding environment doesn't naturally generate, or it must move a lot of mass downward very quickly. The former will always be lame (like TFA) while the latter must see radical miniaturization before it will be practical.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#6I can't find any mention on the site to the surfaces it supports - turns out its powered by magnets, so only works on magnetic surfaces.
Sort of. The surface is copper, not "magnetic" in the commonly-understood sense.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#7A good breakdown of this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMZ2cyNxPwg
The company behind it is pushing the limits of false advertising as far as I'm concerned. They're preying on the not-so-technically-literate to convince them this is basically a "proper" hoverboard, when it's just a gimmick toy that can only be used over a conductive surface.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#8A good breakdown of this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMZ2cyNxPwg The company behind it is pushing the limits of false advertising as far as I'm concerned. They're preying on the not-so-technically-literate to convince them this is basically a "proper" hoverboard, when it's just a gimmick toy that can only be used over a conductive surface.
The materials I saw were pretty forthright about working only on metal surfaces, although certainly the website itself doesn't emphasize that. What I do find questionable is that the creator is quoted all over the place as saying that he is committed to creating a version that won't require a metal surface. As far as my understanding of physics goes though, that's not possible... and presumably he realizes that. So that part certainly seems like a ploy.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#9I can't find any mention on the site to the surfaces it supports - turns out its powered by magnets, so only works on magnetic surfaces.
Sort of. The surface is copper, not "magnetic" in the commonly-understood sense. http://www.wired.com/2014/10/physics-hendo-hoverboard/
Works on aluminum too. Interestingly it doesn't work on "magnetic" surfaces like iron, because then the surface itself is magnetized and the board just sticks to it.
Re: The World's First Hoverboard
#10A good breakdown of this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMZ2cyNxPwg The company behind it is pushing the limits of false advertising as far as I'm concerned. They're preying on the not-so-technically-literate to convince them this is basically a "proper" hoverboard, when it's just a gimmick toy that can only be used over a conductive surface.
The materials I saw were pretty forthright about working only on metal surfaces, although certainly the website itself doesn't emphasize that. What I do find questionable is that the creator is quoted all over the place as saying that he is committed to creating a version that won't require a metal surface. As far as my understanding of physics goes though, that's not possible... and presumably he realizes that. So t…
It's not completely impossible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamagnetism. Most materials, when exposed to a magnetic field, produce an opposing magnetic field. However, this requires pretty ridiculously large magnetic fields: the article shows a small frog being suspended in a 16 tesla field, which is just insane. Not sure if that's what's going on here, but if it's not actually ruled out, it makes me a bit more confident that there's a more efficient way to do it.