Reflection

There were many ideas that worked and hadn't worked during our balloon car project. Three ideas that didn't work well were that first Alexander and I had an idea to tape up the CD holes so only the small dowel could spin between the CD hole. This idea didn't work out so well because of the friction the tape put on the rolling of the dowels. Our second idea was to make only the CD's to roll instead of creating the dowels roll with the CD's. This caused the balloon car to roll slowly and not far. Our third idea that failed was when instead of using two smaller wheels up in front and two larger wheels in back. This turned our balloon upwards so that the balloon couldn't push the air pressure into the ground to cause it to roll. The first idea that did work with our project is to use a small light weight base so it wouldn't weigh down the wheels causing friction with the ground. The second idea that worked was when Alexander had the idea to put the dowels through a straw so that both the dowels and wheels could spin with a light amount of friction. The third great idea we had was when Alexander and I replaced our smaller wheel in front with two larger wheels on each end of the base. Our project was ready for launch and completed 25.7 meters the second run! The most valuable part of this project for me must have been learning how to use Newtons three laws to create a car to go as far as possible. It taught me what science really is about and how it's used in everyday activities such as throwing a football. Those were the good and bad ideas Alexander and I went through as a partnership.

Analysis 4 and 5

4. Newtons Third Law of Motion has to do with that every action has an opposite and equal re-action. Our balloon had the action of releasing the air, but the re-action was the air pushing back on the balloon car and making it go down the hallway, therefore having an action/re-action situation such as Newtons Third Law states.

5. The three different types of friction are Fluid, Sliding, and Rolling Friction. Fluid friction was used because the balloon car traveled through the air, causing the friction between the air and the car. Sliding friction was involved because the wheels had to slide against the ground when the car moved. And Rolling friction was used when the car rolled across the hallway to its final destination of 25.7 meters!

Analysis Questions 1-3

1. Newtons First Law of Motion states that a object will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, and an object will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Our Balloon Car followed Newtons Law because the outside force was friction. The car came to a stop because the friction was higher that the force produced by the balloon. The balloons force was higher that the force of friction at the beginning, but it later was not.

2. Newtons Second Law of Motion states that the more mass an object has, the more force it will take to put it in motion. With our balloon car, the force the balloon created was more than enough to push the car at the start. It had enough to accelerate the car. Towards the end, when the balloon had no more air, the car slowed down.

3. The concept of momentum states that the more mass or velocity an object has, the harder it is to stop. A 18 wheeler is going to be harder to stop than our balloon car, but against air resistance our car still had force to break through. The velocity our car was going was greater than the force of air resistance, which meant that our balloon car could travel a little bit farther, even after the balloon had run out of air.

Trial #2

Today was it! The final day for our balloon car! On our first trial day and second trial day, David and I were sick. Fortunately Mrs. Emerson was nice enough for us to make up the other trial on Wednesday. This was my first time seeing the new car that David had engineered. It looked awesome! Like he said in the description below our first test only went 1.9 M, so we wanted to AT LEAST quadrouple that number. Yes we did. We set up the balloon car already to go, and it was off! 10m, 15m, 20m, 25.7 meters! It finally stopped as it hit the fire extinguisher with still more power left. We came in third place for our class, a bronze medal! I think this one was successfully done by David. He took apart our old car and made a totally new design, that paid off in a big way! This was a huge success!

Trail #1

Alexander and I had our first balloon car trial on December 5 2011. On the day of the trial Alexander was out sick with a cold. It was my duty to show him what our balloon car can do. I blew the balloon up and let the car go it went at a good fast pace but since the balloon was over weighted with air the balloon flopped over the nosel making air impossible to flow out. It was a devastation because i worked on this project for about 4 hours straight before the trial that Sunday evening. Our car ended with 1.9 meters, and did not achieve our goal of 10 meters. I believe this car was a failure because of the friction between the wheels rolling and how the balloon toppled over the nosel causing it to completely stop. hopefully well find out how to fix the problem by our second trial.

Design #4

Our car didn't roll so well, so since Alexander was sick I decided to take the time to redo our balloon car. it was pretty easy to remake all I had to do was cut a Ritz cracker box in half and put the two dowels attached to the CD wheels in a straw so that both the wheel and the axel could spin. the balloon part of the project was all set with just gluing the balloon to the back of the base. My first practice trial with it, the balloon car succeeded 10 meters which is an A for the grade! Wish Alexander and I luck with our new improved car.

Design #3

Over this past weekend I was brainstorming an idea to make me and Alexander's balloon car to travel straight instead of swerving left or right. The first idea that came to mind was to have only one front wheel instead of two. This really helped the direction of where the car went, but it still wasn't consistent enough because the two caps on each side of the wheel were too loose and made the front wheel turn slightly left. On Sunday morning I thought and thought of a way to consistently keep our balloon car moving more accurately straight and then it clicked. I took a large popicle stick and cut a space between it so the wheel could just be able to spin smoothly between the stick. I thought of an idea to make the balloon blow the air out more smoothley also. I found a rubber cylinder with quite a large opening for maximum power and glued the balloon around the rubber cylinder. I blew the balloon up and let it rip. It still was going left! By this time it was getting late into the afternoon and my mind was stumped. i gave another idea a try by spreading the weight evenly by gluing two popsicle sticks on the right side to give the right side more weight and gluing only one popsicle stick on the left side of the car. It finally went straight and hit 17ft on a tiled floor. Let's just hope it gets more than 17ft on our trial day tomorrow, wish us luck!

Design #2

Today is November 29, 2011. And David and I are so close to finishing our car! We did major improvements to our car. We continued our idea with the CDs as wheels. To make them stay straight we pocked holes in bottle caps with an awl. We put them on to the dowels that are our "Axels" and sandwiched our wheels in between them. At first we couldn't get the caps to go on the way we wanted and it didn't roll as well as it should have. Then we reversed the whole with the awl and made a perfect fit! Unfortunaly, our wheels didn't work to well, so David is going to problem solve this week. Then came the last problem, the balloon. We had a balloon, but we couldn't make it stay on the car without the CDs being pushed by it. We tried an extended platform for the balloon to lay on, but it wasn't enough. David and I are hoping to get together this weekend and finish the car and take some pictures!

Ballon Car Design- Day 1

11/22/11-
Today David and I started the BCP. Two days away from Thanksgiving, we were full of joy when we started this project. I had brought in two normal CD's and David had two GameCube discs. He also brought in these bigger than average chopstick like things. We started brainstorming. We decided to go with the GameCube games in the front and the CDs in the back. This would give this car some more aerodynamic-ness. David also brought in a hot glue gun. But then we hit the obstacle,"What are we going to use for the body?" Our answer was right in front of us. To bring my CDs in, I had a Zoo Tycoon game holder. This was an almost perfect size for our BCP. We started glueing. Eventually we wound up with what looked like a frame of a car! Then the wheels. CDs are really thin, so they didn't want to stay up straight when we tried to roll the car. We ended our 52 minute adventure with a plan. David and I would collect Vitamin Water bottle caps from our friends to put on either side of the CDs and games. These would keep the CDs up straight. One problem; every other kid in the school has the same idea. We can get by that. Davids dad has this hole cutting device that makes a hole just big enough for those chopstick things to fit into. The CDs will be rolling quite nicely after that. We will get working on that for Tuesday! Pictures will be up later this week!