You wouldn’t know it, but the humble electric fan leads a double existence. By day it oscillates around homes and offices providing a cooling fresh breeze for those stuffy, hot summer months. By night however, it has a life of its own. Never has a lowly electrical appliance provided such entertainment! So, purely for your enjoyment only, here are our top ten creative uses for electric fans.
1. Spinning Card Tricks
A man named Brian Pankey probably holds the world record for the most number of card shuffles made using an electric fan. He manages to perform triangle cuts, one-handed shuffles and cap’n crunch triple cuts all whilst spinning one playing card on top of another in mid air using an electric fan.
2. Lighting Cigarettes
Yes it might sound easy but have you ever tried to light a cigarette whilst standing within one foot of an electric fan (that’s switched on obviously)? Lighting one cigarette is hard enough so imagine lighting 18 – that’s just what Sean Farrell did whilst the power was on high. See if you can beat him.
3. Plaque Removal
Do you have trouble getting rid of tooth plaque? Well you can cut out the dentist by using your handheld electric fan to remove all that dirt and grime from your teeth, leaving them gleaming white if not a little sore. Well, it’s worth it for saving the dentist’s fee right?
4. Drying Paint with Fans
If you’ve got a freshly painted room you probably know how time consuming it is to wait for the paint to dry, especially in the middle of winter. But this process can be considerably shortened by plugging in a couple of electric fans and pointing them at the walls. Before you know it, your walls are nice and dry and your room is also fresh and airy.
5. Fan-tastic Hair Dryer
You’ve washed your hair all ready for that romantic dinner and you’ve only half an hour left to style and blow dry. Then disaster strikes – the hotel doesn’t supply a hairdryer. What do you do? Towel dried hair may give you the bed-head look but it’s not exactly what you were going for. Then you spot the electric fan, gleaming like a knight in shining armour in the corner of the room. Put it on a high setting for that initial blast that will give your hair body and then turn it down to style and dry. Viola, beautifully styled and dry hair.
6. Axial Fan Hot Drink Cooler
What do you do when your drink or soup is too hot to touch? Having a burnt tongue is no laughing matter and blowing it yourself takes time and effort. Instead put your cup next to your PC or laptop where the axial fan is located for around 1 minute and allow the cooling breeze to bring your beverage to the perfect temperature.
7. Soft Fruit Slicer
Have fun and get healthy at the same time with this classic twist on a fruit slicer. Carefully remove the cage from the electric fan. Now position a bowl underneath and take it in turn with friends to hurl fruit at the moving fan. Obviously it’s best to turn the fan onto its top speed setting for this one and you may also want to wear protective clothing. Strawberries, raspberries and other small soft fruit works best I find. Not so good with melons or apples.
8. Make Your Own Windmill Power Generator
Do you fancy getting some free energy? Buy yourself a small battery operated fan. Place the fan on a table facing the wind and measure the DC voltage output using a multimeter. Place your rechargeable batteries in the fan and put it outside in a full wind, taking care to secure it to the table so that the wind doesn’t blow it away. The power of the wind will now recharge your batteries.
9. Voice Changer
If you haven’t tried this already then you are really missing out! Get close to the fan, turn it on full power and try speaking or singing for an instant voice changer. Try your hand at being Darth Vader or form a duet and sing like the Chipmunks.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Nathan Morgan has been an IT professional for 14 years. His work is currently focused on Linux servers. He has encryption experience including the deployment of True Crypt and similar packages, and detailed knowledge of document scanning solutions to transform off-line archives into accessible digital data.