Let's think about how a vacuum cleaner works. It has a canister, behind which there is a motor and a fan. The fan blades are tilted so that air is forced through the hose and the canister, through the porous bag, and out the 'back' of the vacuum cleaner. Without this airflow, the vacuum cleaner will not suck! If you were to turn it on in space, there would be no airflow, so the dumb thing wouldn't suck, and you would be stuck with a dirty carpet floating in interplanetary space! Now, because the fan blade is attached to the shaft of a motor, and because the shaft turns around in a ball bearing raceway, there is friction between the spinning shaft and the casing of the motor which is attached to the vacuum cleaner. This friction causes some of the momentum of the shaft and the blade to be transferred to the casing of the motor. On the ground, this has no noticeable effect, but in space, with the vacuum cleaner not attached to a large mass, an interesting thing will happen. When the vacuum cleaner is turned on, the spinning shaft will eventually cause the vacuum cleaner to begin spinning in the opposite direction from the shaft, because the shaft pushes against the bearing causing it to want to move in the opposite direction as the shaft. At first this happens slowly, then at increasing rpms until an equilibrium is reached where the shaft and the vacuum cleaner are spinning at rates that cause their angular momenta to be equal and opposite. The vacuum cleaner will not spin at the same rpms as the shaft because the vacuum cleaner is more massive, and the friction between the shaft and the vacuum dictates how much angular momentum gets transferred between the axle and the vacuum cleaner. Shamlessly borrowed from: http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q532.html
Absolutely ... Not. That's why I included this; Shamlessly borrowed from: http://www.astronomy...qadir/q532.html
Would be crazier if it worked and once we got back to earth and studied and we would see... like little tiny martians lol
