How the air slows a closing book

Abstract

When two flat surfaces approach each other, the fluid in between is accelerated and ejected from the sides at large speeds. This situation occurs often in everyday life, such as when you step in a puddle and create splashes of water, or when you clap your hands or close a book and create jets of air. For these systems, the inertia of the fluid resists the acceleration, creating large nonlinear forces on the flat surfaces. In this work, we study the case of a closing book. The fluid motion in this case is relatively easy to model, using the conservation of mechanical energy, and to measure using a MEMS gyroscopic sensor. This study reveals the unusual forces that occur when two plates collide in an experiment that can be performed by students at home.