From the October 2017 issue
Because a 1998 Plymouth Breeze no longer turns heads as it once did, used-car salesmen are masters of countless attention-grabbing gimmicks. Among the tactics, no shtick is simultaneously as eye-catching and absurd as the spastic flail of a perky nylon tube with vaguely human features.

Known as a Tall Boy, Fly Guy, AirDancer, or, more commonly, ?that ridiculous thing,? this used-car-lot staple might be the pinnacle of lowbrow marketing, right up there with ?buy a car, get a gun.? But there?s a load of no-nonsense science behind the tube man?s random yet seemingly unending pop-and-flop routine. There?s also some brilliance in the simplicity of the thing. A conventional fan turning at a constant speed blows air up through the lightweight nylon sleeve, resulting in pressure fluctuations inside the tube sufficient to incite an AirDancer?s signature samba.
The tube-man concept originated with 60-foot-tall two-legged figures created for the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It didn?t take long for capitalism to nab the idea. Today, you can buy your very own six-foot version for just $120?as we did.
The behavior is explained by Bernoulli?s principle, a fluid-dynamics tenet derived from Newton?s second law of motion. It states that as the velocity of a fluid increases, its pressure decreases. Initially, the moving air, which behaves as an incompressible flow in the open-ended AirDancer, creates enough pressure to inflate the tube. As t...