Did I know I wanted a levitating hotdog cooker thing? Absolutely not, but now I kind of want one.
YouTuber NightHawkInLight made a frankly unnecessary invention that cooks a levitating hotdog surrounded by a heated coil. As the video shows, the cooker relies on something called the Coandă effect, which states that a liquid or gas will tend to cling to a rounded surface. As Gizmodo wrote, it’s the same effect that makes coffee run down the side of a mug when you pour it out. The machine uses a stream of air from a compressor to levitate the hotdog (which crucially has a rounded form), while the heat from the coils cooks it.
The gadget isn’t going to be on sale anytime soon, but with enough free time and know-how, maybe we’ll all be firing up levitating hotdogs by the Fourth of July.