What To Do On A Day Like Thursday. . .

So, the team and I are officially, and without a doubt, stuck. We have tried various launches and still we have no lift. So far we've tried different designs of balloons and even free hand made balloons. However, none of them seem to want to lift off. Of course, with our various flight tests we have changed some more things around yet again!

1. We are not using a can engine anymore. We're trying to use a cotton ball dipped in rubbing alcohol as fuel. We're still not completely sold on this new idea, so we're thinking of using both or going back and forth between the two.
2. We're also trying to place the fuel/engine higher up into the balloon. Hopefully by doing this the hot air will be more focused on the top of the balloon right away.
3. We're also trying to seal the bottom of the balloon or at least make the hole smaller in size. That way the hot air can't escape through the bottom of the balloon.

And. . . That's it! We really don't know what to do. We've considered turning this balloon project into a flame thrower project, but I guess that's "too dangerous" or something. Our last hope is to go back to the beginning. We're thinking of using the same design as our first balloon, but with all the modifications we've worked out. We're thinking that the full scale model will actually work, versus our scaled down model of the same balloon. Hopefully it works, but we need materials and time to get those materials first. We'll get it done by Christmas though, I hope.

Failure!

It still doesn't work!!!!
Guess what did it in this time? THE WIND!!! The top of balloon keeps getting filled with warm air, but the balloon still refuses to take off. So yes, we failed, and we are a bit stuck. After having three balloons go up in flames, we're a little discouraged. Luckily it's almost Thanksgiving, so we'll get a break to collect ourselves and try this all again. We now know what we're planning on doing next. We're just too lazy to do it on a two day week. So, I'm blogging.

So that was our latest attempt at lighting a balloon on fire! Guess what! It was a success! However, someday we will succeed at making a hot air balloon lift off from the ground! This however, will call for some desperate and extreme measures. Here is the new plan:

1. Find a way to launch inside, as it is always too windy to do it outside. We are thinking about trying to do a launch in the school's shop room.
2. We are going to try and make a different design balloon. We're trying to look it up new designs, but we're thinking about something like a Chinese lantern.

We shall see how this goes after break! Happy Thanksgiving! 

Update on Balloon 3

So I just wanted to do a quick update on the new balloon! Here is is in all its wonderful glory!

Me with the 3rd balloon prototype.

It is completely done, and is just waiting for a calm day to set off. You can see that we actually changed engines again. Instead of using two normal cans, we are using one large Arizona Tea can. The can is just a few grams heavier, but it is more stable, and there is no way that it will fall apart. You can also see the larger and stronger wire that we have used to fasten it to the balloon. Don't worry the thick wire was only used there. We used the lighter and thinner wire to line the balloon in order to give it a bit more structure.

This is our new can. Thank you Steven!

So there you have it. Hopefully this will be the one to actually lift off! If not, I'll be uploading another video of students setting things on fire to YouTube.

It's Windy! That Means It's Blog Day!!!

So yes! We have done a lot of stuff recently! Allow me to fill you in.

We finished making two more balloons. With our second balloon we changed a few things. We braced the engine wire, raised the fuel punctures in the engine, and we glued the cans of the engine together.

Amber with our second balloon.

With our first flight, nothing really happened. The top of the balloon was very warm but would not lift from the ground. However, the glue completely melted on the cans, so they fell apart. Since the balloon didn't go up in flames, we decided to take it inside and fix it up. So while we were inside, we changed the engine design. Instead of using three cans, we shortened it down to two.

We went from this, a three can engine (one of the cans is missing)

To this, a two can engine, with the top not cut off

First test flight of the day.

With our second test flight, we still didn't get lift off. However, we had a problem. By the time we were ready for our second flight of the day, the wind had picked up a bit. This threw our entire test flight off. We tried to hold the balloon before the balloon lifted, but the wind blew one of the sides toward the center, and it caught on fire.

Second test flight of the day.

Good news! We, once again, learned A LOT from these test flights. Thank you for prototypes. So for our third balloon we will be trying some different things. First we will be structuring the inside of the balloon with wire. This way the balloon does have more structure and won't be too affected by any stray wind. We are also going to keep our new engine design of only two cans. Along with that, we are not going to cut the off of the first can. This makes it so that there is a smaller and more focused hole for the burning fuel to come through into the balloon. Finally, we will only launch on a good day. That means little to no wind! That's why I'm here now. It's windy and I need to update this blog. So there you are. Cross your fingers for a good launch day tomorrow.

First Test Flight!!!

I am sick and tired of writing this, so if the internet dies and I lose this post again, you are never ever going to see it. Ok, on to the actual project.






We finished the balloon! We were also able to take our wonderful prototype air balloon and test it! Though it did end up getting set on fire. It was awesome by the way! So though this wasn't a successful launch per say, we did learn a lot about this launch.

1. We need to make sure the engine is further into the balloon.
2. We need to hold the balloon steady until the balloon properly launches.
3. We should try to launch on a still, no so windy day, if at all possible.
4. And we need to make sure that our holes are not so low on the can, so we can put a proper amount of rubbing alcohol in the engine.

So! This is why people should prototype. With this launch, we are fairly confident that our new balloons will launch like they need to. We will be making two balloons this next time, so it may take a while before we do a new launch. We're doing this so that we can change the construction of one of the balloons to see if it makes any difference. It also means that we have a backup balloon if the next one goes up in flames like our last one! So there you are, balloon flight test number one!

New Project!

After finally completing our Wile E. video analysis, we really didn't know what to do next. We spent the last week trying to figure out what we wanted to do. Through missing group members and having absolutely no ideas, we finally figured out what we wanted to do for our next project.

My group will be trying to build a miniature hot air balloon! We found this wonderful website which gave us the directions on how to build a hot air balloon out of gift tissue paper. We've been able to get almost half way through the directions, but today we are officially stuck. Our project is locked in one of the cub bards in class, and the only person who has the key to open it is gone. So here I am updating my blog.

So for this hot air balloon project, we will be relating it to physics by trying to work with some of these concepts:

• Convection
• The concept of how hot something has to be in order to rise
• And anything else we come up with

So that's what we are doing, or rather trying to do, for our next project. Hopefully things will go well, and I will be able to update some crazy cool findings in the next week!

WE'RE DONE!!!

My group and I have been working on this project diligently for the past two weeks, and we are finally done! So here you go! The physics of Wile. E. Coyote!!!

Reflection of the Week - 10/10/11 - 10/14/11

I'm stuck.

This week has, unfortunately, been a bit unproductive. I've actually been gone two days this week so that really didn't help at all. However, I have been able to figure a few things out:

1. Watching Looney Toons is still ridiculously hilarious, even when all you're watching is a 20 second clip over and over again. 
2. I've actually figured out why the large rock teeters slower than expected when the coyote and smaller rock hit it. There is an extra rock underneath the larger rock that acts as a separate type of lever, which slows down the joined rocks as they come down. I've also been able to calculate the length of each rock, based on the length of Coyote. The largest rock is about 13ft, the rock the coyote is on is about 7ft, and the rock that catapults the coyote is about 6ft.
3. If my calculations are correct, and I'm only half sure about them, Coyote falls 2480.6m, which adds up to a force of 55,566 Newtons, after he hits the overhanging rock. That's a whole bunch of newtons. 
4. This is where I got stuck. I need to calculate the mass of the catapulting rock, but it's in cartoon land. I can assume that the rock is sandstone because it is in the Grand Canyon/desert, and I know that it is about 7ft long. 

So that's what I did this week. I've calculated about half of the Physics so far seen in this video, and I'm stuck on the other half. That's what I'll be doing next week though. I'll probably have a meeting with my group and/or teacher to get some ideas. Oh! Since you have no idea what this magical "video" is that I keep talking about, here's a link if you want to check it out and keep up with my calculations/Physic babble.

Reflection of the Week - 10/3/11 - 10/7/11

Ok so continuing with Wile E.:

We've divided the project into three separate projects. I will be working on calculating all the physic stuff for the video when Wile E. gets catapults with rocks.

1. So far I've been using the equation: d=.5(g)(t2): Distance is equal to one-half x the rate of gravity x time squared. 
2. With this I've been able to calculate how far the coyote fell.
3. After finding this information I found a site to calculate the average force of a falling object: 

Overall, this week has been about trying to figure out how things actually work in a cartoon world. I've been able to find the first few physics elements of this video, but there's still more work to be done. Yep, it's been a work week, and next week will be too.  

Reflection of the Week - 9/26/11 - 9/30/11

Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons. Any person with a decent childhood can remember Wile W. Coyote and The Roadrunner. That's why, for our Physics project, my group is trying to analyze the physics of Wile E. Coyote. Falling of enormous cliffs, walking on air, with all the crazy things the Coyote manages to do, how does Physics really come into play? That's what we've been trying to do all week.

First we started thinking of things we wanted to check out. We came out with three main things:

1.      How far does the Coyote usually fall off a cliff, and how he is catapulted when he doesn't fall?

          2.   How fast does the Coyote go so that he is able to walk on                   air?

3.      What happens so that an Acme Bear Trap is set off with a drop of oil and not an entire bowl of Acme Bird Seed?

Then we set out to find some videos, thank you YouTube! All three videos were pretty easy to find (good old Wiley falls off cliffs pretty often), especially the third one since it's a very selective scene. Next we found out the average weights and measurements of a coyote and roadrunner. We had to assume that both Wile E. and The Roadrunner are about average, as there are no hard facts on them, and they're obviously not correctly scaled anyway. After all this we started a GoogleDoc Presentation and started piling the information and videos together. That brings us up to date. Right now we are "prototyping" calculations. We're not quite sure how to calculate how fast Coyote has to run to walk on air, so we're working it out. So that's what we'll be doing all next week, trying to find the best way to calculate all this physics stuff!

Constant Velocity Lab

Le first post!

In Phunsics, we were to set up a lab that would help us understand constant velocity. My group was obviously in some crazy mood, because we decided to track the velocity of one of our members running across the parking lot. Needless to say, the data was not constant, but that doesn't matter.

Procedure!

Since we're in the 21st century, we used an iPad equipped with the app, Video Physics to complete this lab. With all this fancy stuff, we were able to take a video of our runner running 36ft, which we already had measured out. With the app, we were able to trace our runner on the video, and have it analyzed for us. We came to the conclusion that our funner had a velocity of 1.125ft/sec.

An example of the Video Physics App:

The Average Velocity of Our Runner: