Day 4: Final Draft's Concepts

Mini Lab Report 1:

If the vehicle is powered by a rubber band, it will travel farther than being powered by a balloon.

Previously, before the making of our final draft, many different possible vehicles were made. One being powered by a rubber band was among the many designs and creations. As mentioned in previous entries, the rubber band scooter had actually traveled a small distance of barely 3 centimeters. As a backup plan, the contruction of a balloon-powered car was taking place. Some of the parts from the rubber band car were being used-- recycling and reusing. The chopstick was the new idea as the base, so that the balloon would be able to fit between the wheels. Soon the vehicle was completed, and the balloon had deemed its power of force sufficient.

It was discovered that the hypothesis was wrong because using the rubber band as the source of power made the vehicle travel less distance than being powered by a balloon.
 

Mini Lab Report 2:

If there are two wheels on the vehicle, then it will have less mass, less friction, and will travel farther.

The idea of two wheels was chosen while brainstorming for a new scooter that would incorporate the power of force as the balloon; it was based off of a segway scooter. After getting a chopstick, two of the CD wheels from the old rubber band scooter were carefully taped to the stick(the chopstick was in between the two CDs). Then, a straw was cut through one of its sides and taped to the chopstick(which was a step that was ,soon discovered, supposed to be right before taping on the CDs). The plan was to attach the balloon to the scooter. The straw was there so that when the balloon is taped to the vehicle(the straw), it wouldn't spin with the taped chopstick and CDs. Although it still had some tweaks, the scooter had traveled much faster than the car powered by the rubberband with the four heavy CDs.

The hypothesis is proven to be true because with three to four wheels, they were always bound to the risk of not moving at all because it was heavy from producing too much friction.

Mini Lab Report 3:

If a soda top was used to hold the balloon in place, then the vehicle will move in a straight line.

One of the main tweaks(as mentioned above), was the scooter's inabiliy to travel in a straight line. To solve this, the layout of the draft had included a soda lid taped to the straw. The lid was aquired by going to McDonalds. Before taping it on, the place to usually insert the straw was cut off, in case the pointy plastic would stop air flow or pop the balloon. Out of all the 10+ tests, there were only a few that had the scooter traveling in a straight line-- though when it did, it was very successful.

The hypothesis and idea is unreliable and proved to sometimes be incorrect because even though the balloon was positioned in a way that would release a straight airflow, the end of the balloon let out an uneven stream of air, making the scooter swerve/turn midway.

Summary:

During the construction of the scooter vehicle, there were some changes to the drafts. At first, we were going to have the vehicle being composed of 4 wheels. It didn't work as well as we wanted to have, so we just took 2 of the CDs off. Ideas of trying to not use the soda lid were used as well. There was also thought and testing of a design where the balloon(s) would be in front of the scooter and attached by a string. This was a possibility of a draft because there was a risk of the balloon touching the wheels. causing the scooter to slow down and actually made the car go backwards.

 

Concepts Applied:

Newton's 2nd law of acceleration and mass is applied to this vehicle because since the mass of our scooter is small, the amount of net force needed to move the object a far distance is far as well. The law of action and reaction forces are used by the car, too. Because the balloon's air is pushing the vehicle(action force), the vehicle is basically pushing the air(reaction force) for an equilibrium.


The pair of us had previously built a car that was powered by winding back a rubber band around the wheel's axel. Although this design had failed miserably, along with our current vehicle, it still had the same concepts of kinetic and potential energy. When winded back, the car had much potential energy. There was kinetic energy in both scooters as well; the rubber band/blown up balloon allowed the vehicle to move, and kinetic energy has to do with moving objects.