Reflection

On the day of testing, we saw many different designs. Some of them were vehicles we would never think of to build-- the Mousetrap was among the many. Their group used an actual mousetrap with a fishing fishing wire attachted to it. It was observed that the wires were winded around the back axels of the cars resulting in the total distanced traveled of 29 tiles. There were others with ideas that we had both considered using or had used; in the long run. we realized they wouldn't work or go as far as we were aiming for. Similar to us, many other people had balloon powered cars as well. Out of these, a few worked, but there were some that would not even move. A possible cause could have been that the balloon was facing in a way were its air flow was either being restricted or in the wrong direction.

Our car worked well at first, but kept turning around at around the fourth/fifth tile. If it had kept going straight, the vehicle would have definitely gone the distance of eight tiles, or so recorded from previous testing. If this project was done over again, something that would have been added is another set of small and light wheels in the front. Even though this would result in more mass and create more friction, the front wheels may have stopped it from turning. If we had kept the car with only two wheels, part of the draft that could have been changed would be the balloon. Instead of just letting go of the balloon, there could be, like another team had thought of,  two straws put into the hole of the balloon, limiting the air flow, yet making the wind stronger and more precise the whole time. This design was actually thought of and tested earlier, but we only used one straw and it didn't work, so we moved on to another idea without adding the number of straws. This project can help in further investigations about real cars or machines used for transportation in general. For example, when air comes out of the balloon, its backward force pushes the vehicle forward. This is the same type of way a rocket travels because the fuel of the rocket sends the airship flying as well..