Using Vibration to Make Stuff Stick Contact-Free to Ceilings

What happened

Using Vibration to Make Stuff Stick Contact-Free to Ceilings, according to Hackaday. Generally making stuff stick to something like a ceiling requires resorting to suction cups, glue or something much more permanent, but [Steve Mould] starts his video featuring a playing card that is clearly defying gravity with no such measures. All that it seems to take is the small vibration motor placed on said playing card, with its vibrations making the card stick like a kind of magic trick.

Although the easy explanation would be that it creates a kind of Bernoulli grip – a common pneumatic, contactless gripping device – [Steve] explains how it’s more complex than that. This vibration adhesion effect doesn’t rely on the same constant pressure drop that a Bernoulli grip experiences within the small gap between the surface and the object.

Although a gap is present, it’s much smaller in this case. Of note is that this effect only occurs when the object is made of a flexible enough material that can vibrate along with the vibration source, in the form of a motor or transducer.

Key facts

• Generally making stuff stick to something like a ceiling — requires: resorting to suction cups, glue or something much more permanent, but [Steve Mould] starts his video featuring a playing card that is clearly defying gravity with no such measures