Balloon Car

To create a mousetrap car and measure its performance. We will also see where force and energy is impacting on the performance, for example friction will impact on the cars performance as it generates heat and slows to car down thus meaning that the car may not travel as far as it should. Another force that is demonstrated in testing of the car kinetic energy, without kinetic energy the car would not travel at all.

Audience Relevancy: Learning how to make balloon animals is cheap, entertaining, and can be shared with other people.

My first design was too big to fit on the wedge of wood that we worked with so I had to modify the design by making the top more curved and as a result, the car was shorter than I had originally planned it to be. After the design was complete, we cut out the outlines and taped them onto foam wedges that were the same size as the wooden wedges that we would use later. Then we traced

We researched information from. Before I didn’t know what was a mousetrap car was and how it was used. I learned that the whole idea how to build a mousetrap car. Also, I learned that velocity is really important on how to build a mousetrap car. Most importantly I learned that it is hard to draw any accurate conclusions besides the fact that good construction is required for a good vehicle. My partner and I was first designed is the tires are CD's because we thought help the car go faster.

We were given groups to design and make a mousetrap powered car that will roll as far as possible. This will be measured and be put into a graph. We will make three modifications to our mousetrap car over the course of the experiment. We have a variety of different materials, including plastic, wooden wheels and a dowel, screws, mousetrap, blue tack and a piece of string. Forces were acting in a negative way and a positive way on the car. Gravity was pulling the car down to the ground. Uplift was pushing up upon the car against gravity. Drag was also known as friction, holding back the car while it was moving. Thrust was in the cars favour, pushing forward against the force drag. There were also many forms of energy being used and being wasted like heat and sound energy. Potential energy was stored in the mousetrap, propelling itself forward. Kinetic energy was also demonstrated when the car started to roll.

The mousetrap car, Versace, was tested multiple times to test how far it went. When constructing the car, the group members had different ideas, but all ideas were put into the construction of the car. The car was tested with CDs as wheels and then paper plates as wheels. Each time, when testing the car, the axle gearing had different measurements and distances. The group had finally gotten the best distance on the car. The group was also able to find the kinetic energy of the boat. Then the data from the tests were used to find the efficiency of the car. Overall, the car did very well.

I had to get some duct tape, a balloon, some straws, and some card board. Then I put them all together by duct taping the straws after bending them the way I like then I put the egg inside and added a balloon and it worked surprisingly. It fell like a rock and it landed sideways it wouldn’t make sense that it didn’t crack. It didn’t have a scratch besides the one I put into it to measure. The body worked perfectly, but the balloon didn’t help at all. It didn’t lessen the blow but it is okay, it still stands today.

The building process of the cars starts out with a piece of wood, students need to cut a chunk out of the back to make room for the gears connecting the rear motor to the axle. You could choose with your team any design that

Another force that was acting on the car was friction, friction was acting on the car because the piece of wood was very rough and had little ridges on it which was rubbing on the car which would cause it to slow down a little bit. The direction that the forces were going was pretty much everywhere, gravity was going down and friction was going forwards and backwards. The car did not work well with the friction because the friction would cause the car to somewhat lose control and go off the side of the ramp, the car did not work well with the gravity either because the gravity is what cause the car to fall and crack the egg. Some ways that we could minimize those forces is by making wheels for the car and making the bottom of the car smooth to reduce the amount of friction, we can't really reduce the gravity in the car but one thing that we could do for that is make the car really light but with a lot of padding for the egg. The reason I say we could make it really light is so that when gravity is acting on the car the car won't fall as fast and would somewhat glide down to the floor with a soft landing for the

The balloon powered race car will be powered by the balloon. The balloon will be blown into and the straw will be the source of the air going into the balloon and then pinched so there is no release of air, then release the air, measure the distance and speed of the car when air is released. This uses the three Newton laws and they are when an object is at rest it stays at rest and an object is in motion it stays in motion in a straight line at constant speed unless acted upon by an unbalanced force, the next is the acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the force applied, the last is every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In conclusion, my 1st car was a bust traveling 9.8 cm/s, my 2nd car did pretty well traveling 35.86 cm/s, but wasn’t built very well and lastly my 3rd car was the most successful, traveling 50.16 cm/s. Over the time that I worked on this project my skills really did advance. In the beginning, I was clueless and now, with the materials, I could make another car in a day. I learned a lot from trial and error.

Describe how your rocket car ran during the first trial run. (For example, did it travel in a straight or curved path?)

Like mentioned before, to make the hot wheel experiment more efficient would be better material and similarly for the rollercoaster would be a better shape of the roller coaster. This would help the efficiency of the two experiments because if the rollercoaster and car have a better shape where air gets past quickly it would lessen the resistance and friction of the car. Having a shape where there is a low amount of resistance would mean there will be less wasted energy because no friction will cause vibrations on the track.

The toy has uses two main energies, Kinetic and Potential. Potential energy is made by the pulling back of the car. Kinetic is made when after the car is

     Acceleration and Speed are obviously the two defining characteristics of a fast car. Newton’s three laws of motion are an essential part in determining how fast a