
Making a Ponyo boat - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/making-ponyo-or-putt-putt-boat.html
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cyanbane
We watch Ponyo at least twice a week in my house (4 year old loves it) and I
have always wondered about the boat. The first thing I wondered if a.) it was
real and worked - based on jgc's post seems that it does and might be more
common than I thought and b.) if the heat would allow Ponyo to actually sit on
the top of the boat as she does while it is moving.

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ktsmith
Pop pop boats are real and have been around for a long time, I had a couple
when I was a kid and it was fun to play with. You can see some more examples
of pop pop boats and read some history here: <http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/pop-
pop/>

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duncanbojangles
When I made my first pop pop boat, I simply coiled a piece of small hobby
tubing for the boiler, with the ends poking through the bottom of the boat.

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tocomment
I don't get how it works. Can anyone explain?

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dclowd9901
The heat from the candle flash-boils the water that's in the "boiler". This is
ejected out of the tubing, and once the diaphragm relaxes, it creates a vacuum
which pulls more water into the boiler to be boiled again.

The reason it doesn't just jerk back and forth in this exchange is because it
sends pressure out in one direction, but draws water in from all directions.

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zokier
I wonder if the efficiency would be improved if the whole engine construction
would be under the surface level.

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sbierwagen
To a degree, but anything powered by a candle is going to have a pretty low
hot-end temperature, and thus miserable thermodynamic efficiency.

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siphr
Nice. This design of creating a toy boat has been extremely popular in south
east asia for atleast the past 20 years. It's good to see it here again.
Nothing beats nostalgia. :)

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staunch
Adding this to my list of things to "invent" should I ever be transported
thousands of years back in time.

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primitur
I wonder how I could make a remote control ponyo, low-tech wise ..

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tzury
It is possible, all you need is to find the controller which will control the
flame, bigger==faster.

