Quadcopters (also known as “drones”) do not fly in vacuum. This is obvious enough that experimenting on one in a vacuum chamber would seem rather uninteresting, but there is one question that may be usefully addressed by such an experiment: the mechanism for yaw control. Quadcopters control yaw (rotation about the vertical axis) by differential rotor speed, and the question of whether those changes in rotor speed create yaw torque via conservation of angular momentum or via atmospheric drag can be addressed by “flying” a quadcopter in a vacuum where there is effectively zero atmospheric drag.
References
1.
The less common tri-rotor configuration most commonly uses a tilting rear rotor for yaw control
. This yaw mechanism is not addressed here.2.
Rhett
Allain
, “How Do Drones Fly? Physics, of Course!
” https://www.wired.com/2017/05/the-physics-of-drones/ (May
19
, 2017
).3.
Anežka
Chovancová
, Tomáš
Fico
, L’uboš
Chovanec
, Peter
Hubinský
, “Mathematical modelling and parameter identification of quadrotor (a survey)
,” Procedia Eng.
96
, 172
–181
(2014
).4.
PASCO scientific
, https://www.pasco.com/prodCatalog/CI/CI-6538_rotary-motion-sensor/.5.
Honeywell HOA1882 infrared transmissive sensor.
© 2018 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2018
American Association of Physics Teachers
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