Dyson is blowing us away with its high-tech Christmas tree display.
A team of eight researchers and designers at Dyson's headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire in the UK have been busy little elves for the past month, designing and building the futuristic tree that was installed in the firm's reception area on Dec. 7.
Applying aspects of Dyson technology, the over 12-foot tree consists of transparent hoover tubes that form the base, complete with nine hovering ornaments that float in the air. We wouldn't expect anything less from the vacuum cleaner maker.
The tree's tubes use jets of wind to have the foam baubles suspended in mid-air. The engineers were able to successfully do this by using a fluid dynamics idea called "Bernoulii's principle."
"The tree uses Bernoulli's principle to suspend baubles at the end of the tree branches. Swiss scientist[,] Daniel Bernoulli[,] demonstrated that, in most cases, the pressure in a liquid or gas decreases as it moves faster, this is why the baubles stays (sic) suspended in the air," a senior fluid dynamics engineer said in a statement.
Of course, no Christmas tree would be complete without its star. The Dyson tree features a yellow foam ball ornament as its star (the other baubles are purple), and the tree even features lights.
While the Dyson Christmas tree is impressive (last year, there was a double helix-inspired tree), it was no easy task.
"We had about a month to create a Christmas tree that no one had attempted before. We had to start from scratch. We went through loads of iterations, but we finally settled on a design. Whether it was the weight of the baubles, or the angles of the pipes or 'branches,' there was so much to consider. A team of us were on board from across RDD — we had to call in a few favors. From fluid dynamics, to acoustics and model making," the Dyson engineer, cited only by his first name, Will, added.
Check out Dyson's high-tech Christmas tree below.
Source: Western Daily Press
