Thread: Card throwing machine

I am doing an experiment for my science class, in which I am studying what variables will make an ordinary playing card "fly" further. The problem is that I need something that can always throw the card the same way evrytime, unlike a human hand, as the slightest variation in original movement could throw off my data. Someone suggested that I take a tennis ball gun and modify it to shoot cards but I don't know how to do that, and don't have or know where to get one. Someone else suggested that I build a catapult of somekind, but it would have to grip the card and be able to release the card at just the right moment. Does anyone here have any suggestions as to what and how to build something like this?

I'm not sure what they're called, but what about something similar to those football launchers? Basically 2 spinning wheel-shaped somethings very close together, you stick in the card the exact same way every time and it should launch it in a pretty similiar way every time. Of course for a playing card those wheels would have to be really, really close to each other.

but wouldn't the card need to be making a certain amount of revolutions per second to actually fly. If you think I'm wrong try throwing a few cards at home. The ones that are thrown with more rps will usually fly further, unless you apply more rps that formard momentum in which case the card will fly backwards about two feet.

Does anyone have any ideas or hints to building a machine that can count the rps or measure the amount of lift generated by a known amount of lift? I would really appreciate the help.

Seems like this is all you need to know, or at least a strating point!
http://www.jonathansantos.com/catInv/CardThrow/

The Mythbusters (discovery chanel series) did this, I think they made a very usable machine in the end. Probably the 'two-spinning-wheels' idea of Neutrino, but I can't remember exactly.

Another route would be to use a pneumatic mechanism to mimic the hand. That way it would have the powerful burst of a hand motion, unlike what you would get with a motor. Or you could do as posted above with the wheels, which they already have a working model for.