** physics science project * To me it didn’t seem like it at first, but this simple balloon car is loaded with physics concepts.
When you inflate the balloon, it stores potential energy. When you release the air in the balloon from the straw, this energy is converted to kinetic energy as the balloon moves around the room. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction meaning that the balloon pushes on the air and the air pushes back on the balloon.Materials • A water bottle • Four water bottle caps (wheels)• Two straws • One wooden skewer • A balloon • Tape Procedure To build a vehicle of this kind you will first cut one of the straws in half, then tape both pieces of the straw to one side of the water bottle. After cut the wooden skewer in half and push each piece through one of the straws. These will form axles. Then use the scissors to poke a hole directly in the center of each plastic bottle cap.
Press each bottle cap onto the ends of the wooden skewers. These will form wheels. To actually make your vehicle move, cut a hole on the top of the water bottle, then place the other straw in and then tape the hole closed so no air is released, then tape the balloon to the top of the straw this forms your “engine”. Blow the balloon up from the straw and when ready place at the start line have a stopwatch ready and start the time when you let go of the straw the vehicle should move at least 3 meters/second do 5 trials and mark down each one. Time to race!!Hypothesis I think my car will work because the air inside of the balloon will want to rush out. I think that will be enough thrust to move my car across the room moving at least 3 meters.
While putting together my vehicle I thought my car would for sure be one of the fastest in the class. After doing my trials and finally testing out our cars I found out that I was right the air inside of the balloon instantly came rushing out making my car go! In all five trials the car did move past 3 meters even though I got all different timings on my trials it still worked and made a promising finish as one of the top two cars in the class, while racing!Observations I noticed that every car does not work perfectly on the first try, I found out that if its axles are not parallel or the wheel’s wobble that means too much friction caused the wheels to get stuck, and the balloon wasn’t powerful enough to push the car forward. During my trial’s I also noticed that sometimes my car would move to the left or even to the right I later on figured out that It’s because my cars wheels were moving around too much making the axles not parallel I then had to go back and make the axles tighter this helped keep the wheels parallel.
