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How do PWCs move in the water?
Home » Boating » Personal Watercraft » How do PWCs move in the water?Personal watercrafts are powered in similar fashion to a rocket. Rather than using high-pressure gas to create a thrust, PWCs use what is called a jet drive that generates a powerful flow of water. Each PWC contains water jets that are driven by a screw-shaped impeller. The jets promptly eject huge amounts of water from the under side of the watercraft through the steering nozzle in a backward spray thrusting the watercraft forward. (This is often why a PWC is generically called a jet ski.) This process works to move the PWC because of Isaac Newton's third law of motion which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. With a PWC, the action occurs as the water is ejected through the nozzle. The watercraft moving forward in the opposite direction of the ejected water is the reaction.
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