What a cool experiment to do! I don’t know of anyone who has actually done this, but if I think about it… this is how i would carry it out:
1. I would enlist willing people who can sneeze (probably at least 10 so we can work out a reasonable average)
2. I would set up a high speed camera that can focus on the tiny water droplets as they come out of that person’s mouth as they sneeze.
3. I would set up a measuring stick to measure the distance from a person’s mouth.
4. As the person starts to sneeze I would set the camera to take lots of high speed photos.
5. Then I would analyse the photos and measure where the water droplets are along the measuring stick at a set time after they leave the mouth… then you can work it out by seeing how far per second (or milisecond) the sneeze travels.
There’s also a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation you could do to estimate it.
You need to know (or at least “guesstimate”)
A. The volume of air that comes out in one sneeze
and
B. The size of your nostrils (specifically, the cross-sectional area of your nostrils)
and
C. How long a sneeze lasts
Then you make the simplification that air comes out at the same speed during the whole sneeze, and then the speed of sneezed air is simply A / (B x C).
Hey brayden
What a cool experiment to do! I don’t know of anyone who has actually done this, but if I think about it… this is how i would carry it out:
1. I would enlist willing people who can sneeze (probably at least 10 so we can work out a reasonable average)
2. I would set up a high speed camera that can focus on the tiny water droplets as they come out of that person’s mouth as they sneeze.
3. I would set up a measuring stick to measure the distance from a person’s mouth.
4. As the person starts to sneeze I would set the camera to take lots of high speed photos.
5. Then I would analyse the photos and measure where the water droplets are along the measuring stick at a set time after they leave the mouth… then you can work it out by seeing how far per second (or milisecond) the sneeze travels.
Now… i’m curious! do you know the answer?
0
There’s also a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation you could do to estimate it.
You need to know (or at least “guesstimate”)
A. The volume of air that comes out in one sneeze
and
B. The size of your nostrils (specifically, the cross-sectional area of your nostrils)
and
C. How long a sneeze lasts
Then you make the simplification that air comes out at the same speed during the whole sneeze, and then the speed of sneezed air is simply A / (B x C).
Have a go!
0