Physics of Quiddich

It seems that quiddich has become something of an intercollegiate sport, albeit in an attenuated form. (Or on the fight fiercely side, Harvard) Somehow, I don't think the sport is quite ready to get off the ground yet.

At least not without some mechanical muggle help. What's needed is a way to add some levity to the proceedings. Perhaps you've seen a Dyson fan. This very cool device appears to be just a sort of metallic ring that produces a rather laminar wind flow with no visible fan blades. I envision a gigantic version mounted horizontally, encased by a transparent wall surrounding the quiddich pitch. A person sitting on a broom is not very stable aerodynamically, so I think some winglets above the player would be needed for stability and to get vertical speeds to some reasonable rate. What would that rate be?

Non-magical flying requires that the flyer's weight be balanced by the transferring downward momentum to air at the rate, dp/dt = mg. At optimal angle of attack, weight, speed, and wing area are related approximately by S = 2.5 W/V^2, so at 10 m/s, a 500 N (50 kg) flyer needs a wing area of 12.5 meters, uncomfortably large. Tweaking various factors might reduce this a bit, but that still leaves the difficult problem of protecting the wings against other players. I suppose upflowing air at 10 m/s or so would be needed.

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