By blowing at pencil, a piece of paper, or another object up to fifty centimeters away, I can cause it to move away from me significantly. But I can't move an object toward myself by inhaling sharply from that distance, even if it is extremely light. Why is that?
Answer
I think the reason is that when you are blowing on an object, you are making lots of air particles collide with it perpendicularly in one direction thus transferring a lot of momentum to the object. When you are sucking air in, the only force that's acting on the object is by the air particles that rush in to fill up the gap that you just created. These particles come in from all kinds of different directions failing to transfer momentum in a consistent way.
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