Update!

The balloon thing is over! I don't know why, but everything we tried failed. Maybe it was materials, a patience issue, or just bad luck, but our balloons never lifted off the ground. So now we're moving on.

We've decided that this Physics class should do something that is more geared towards the community. So, we've decided to do a sort of Physics science fair for younger kids. We've thrown out a BUNCH of ideas out there, and so far we've worked out an experiment with an air track to show elastic and inelastic collisions.

Le Air Track

An elastic collision is essentially a collision between two bodies. The total kinetic energy of those two bodies is equal before and after the collision, which means that they follow the law of conservation of momentum. Here is an example of an elastic collision, thank you Wikipedia.

An inelastic collision is when kinetic energy isn't conserved. Inelastic collisions don't conserve kinetic energy, but they too follow the law of conservation of momentum. Here is an example of an inelastic collision, thank you Wikipedia.

This will hopefully be the first of many experiments that will all be put together for a science fair!