Airzooka!!!

Did somebody say airzooka?
Somebody brought an airzooka to work today. "What the heck is an airzooka?" you ask. Good question. In fact, an airzooka is essentially a plastic flower pot with a rubber diaphragm inside. That sounds pretty boring until you stretch the diaphragm out and let it go. Air gets forced through a 6" dia. hole in the bottom of the pot. This creates a fast moving vortex of air (picture a smoke ring) that can travel 30 feet or more. Trust me, it is awesome. Don't trust me? Picture yourself throwing a ball of air across the room at someone. If you just nick them they will feel like someone has thrown something tremendously large and fast past their head, if you hit them it feels like getting hit in the face with a thousand extra fluffy cotton balls moving at high speed. It is awesome I say! The perfect workplace toy for everybody, unless you work around delicate architectural models or houses made of cards.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the airzooka in action was I could build one of those! And so I did. I used the plastic lid from a 50 pack of blank CDs, cut a golf ball sized hole in the top, and covered the bottom end with heavy paper and packing tape. When I hit the paper diaphragm, POW! a babyzooka. Heh, the next logical step is to build the trashcan sized zooka. TRASHZOOKA! That sounds like it would make an impressive toy, but that is child's play. Wait until you read what Bill Beaty cooked up. He has a page dedicated to ring vortex launchers, and there are some really zany things to try out or even to just try and imagine.

At this point you should be rummaging around the house collecting the materials for your airzooka. Don't delay, unless you want to keep reading this. I'll still be here when you get back. In the meantime let's ask the obvious question that is on everyone's mind, "What is the etymology of the word airzooka?"

Well that is obvious, it is a play on bazooka. Duh.

"Oh, well then what is the etymology of the word bazooka?"

Hmm, now that is a good question. Bazooka actually has a fairly short history. A bazooka is a musical instrument, "similar to a trombone and constructed from two gas pipes and a whiskey funnel." It was used by a popular radio personality named Bob Burns in the 30's and 40's. This link has some examples of Bob on the bazooka. I particularly like the one where he jams with Tommy Dorsey. But back to bazooka, it was during WWII that the troops began calling their anti-tank guns, bazookas. Bob was at the height of his fame and the resemblence between instrument and weapon is striking. I have read that Bob coined the word bazooka, and that it is based on the word bazoo (not in my dictionary) which means a long winded person. I doubt that, but feel free to look into it carefully and let me know if you find anything out.

References

• Speculation Burns invented the bazooka


• Etymology of bazooka