Balloon Project #7

Last night we worked on construction for the balloon we started on Monday with parchment paper; it still needs some work done before it's complete.  We also did some testing on the cube(ish) parchment balloon.  I'll work on getting some of the video posted for that test run soon.  The cube balloon did not lift, yet it did seem to hold better shape with fire inside.

Today in class we discussed Newton's first three laws of physics.  We talked about how they apply to our project and how we might address this application for our prezi.  Due to the use of candles (of various sorts) we feel that discussion of potential and kinetic energy should be fairly straight forward.  We discussed getting Isabel's awesome Balloon Fiesta photos into our prezi, and how to diagram forces and the motion of our project.  David started the force diagram, and has promised to work on the motion diagram.  Isabel said that she would get some videos up on her blog of our experiments from today.  I'm going to spend some time working on the "Harwood Diagram Activity Model for Inquiry."

We constructed some gondolas for the balloons we previously completed (Monday's tissue paper triangles).  We used "soylent" candles (cotton soaked in wax - not people this time, sorry) for this morning's test run.  We tested three balloons today during class time.  Each balloon did something different.

The first balloon tested was the alum-butcher-paper-equilateral-triangle.  This envelope caught fire a bit.  The damage was not beyond the point of another attempt, however we feel that this envelope is rather heavy, and may not be worthy of further investigation for the purposes of this project.

We then tested two of the three tissue-triangles.  The first tissue triangle caught fire, and burnt to cinders in a magnificent blaze of glory.  We did not use alum for any of these three tissue paper models, mainly because, the tissue fell apart when alum-water was applied.  I think I was being a bit too aggressive with my application technique.  We have documented with video the difference of tissue paper envelopes burning with (cylinder model) and without alum (the triangle model first attempt); the difference is significant.

The third balloon we tested today was by far the most successful of the attempts made today.  We had constructed a simple gondola out of three Popsicle sticks taped together with a tea light cup waxed in place to hold our homemade candles.  The gondola was balanced inside the envelope and the candle was lit from this position.  We set the first tissue model on fire trying to get the fuel into the balloon, so we started with the fuel in position inside the balloon for the next envelope (this helped quite a bit).  After a short bit of time, the heat from our candle filled the envelope, and the envelope was able to hold its shape.  Soon afterward, our team could hold the entire construction using only three fingers!

We hypothesized that if the gondola was constructed with less weight the envelope might have a better chance at lift.  We went back to the classroom and worked on some other gondola designs.  We grabbed the two remaining tissue-envelope models, the gondolas, and made plans to get together this weekend for one last experimentation session and to start work for our prezi.