Crush Cocoa Puffs with Compressed Air – Science Project

[tionis]

For a science project/competition, my friend and I have the chance of building a kick butt device to dazzle the judges. Because I'm nuts about relativity and black holes (or maybe just nuts ), I thought maybe we could go for broke and build a transparent, pressurized box to pulverize the contents of a box of cocoa puffs cereal with nothing but compressed air. It would also be nice if we can make the cereal rotate as it is being crushed by the air. But because of the pressures involved, and the nightmare of sourcing parts and stuff, I'm not sure if it can be safely done or done at all, but I thought I ask anyways. Thoughts?

 

[phinds]

Well if you pressured the box by inserting a very thin stream of air you might get some rotation before the pressure builds up too much but just off the top of my head I think the rotation would stop before the collapse occurred because the air would be dense enough by then that the stream wouldn't have as much effect. Just a thought.

 

[berkeman]

I'm not sure if it can be safely done

If you have to ask on an Internet forum, then the answer is probably no.