Philip 4!

We decide to try different wheels for our second trial because the CD's were getting loose. We changed the wheels to smaller and thicker wooded wheels.... the hard part was getting them to be straight and being able to drill the hole right in the center of the wheel.

Trial 1

Our first balloon car trial went great! The car traveled a total distance of 10.7 meters. When the the trial started, the balloon car started to turn off to the left. this is probable because the wheels weren't completely straight. The car was almost hitting the wall when it started to go straight (phew!). It rolled right along side the wass until it came to a stop about halfway down the hallway. We didn't get any footage of this trial due to technical difficulties. :( But we got a picture!!

Designing Philip 3

We kept our triangle design, but instead of making it out of plastic, we used balsa wood. Balsa wood is much lighter and not as flimsy as the previous material we were using. 

The materials we used:

• a coathanger
• 3 CDs
• 6 beads
• 1 meter of balsa wood
• 1 meter of thinner balsa wood
• styrofoam take-out box
• Bertucci's take-out box
• a bottle cap
• lots of glue

In this model of Philip, we did our best to use the lightest materials we could find, but also keep the car working efficiently. Once we crafted the balsa wood body, we ran into a big problem. The balloon kept interfering with the turning of the wheels. We came up with a pretty simple way of fixing this by making small roof-like guards of styrofoam over each wheel. Now, the balloon can fit nicely in between the pieces of styrofoam. We noticed that the pieces of pipe were interfering with the spinning of the wheels as well. To fix this, we put a piece of plastic over the hole in each CD wheel, punched a small hole in each piece of plastic and used bits of a coathanger as axles. To hold the wheels on, we put a small beat on either side of the wheel. To the back of the car, we connected a bottle cap with a hole in it to manage how much air was being let out of the balloon. At the end, we were really excited (and nervous) to see how Philip 3 preformed.

We figured that the car stopped short because the hole in the bottle cap was too small. Once we made the hole bigger...

We are ready for Trial 1. :)

Designing: Philip 2

To make Philip lighter, we altered our original design and eliminated one wheel to make the car have only three wheels. We decided to keep the CDs as the wheels because they were light and had little friction.

In our second attempt we used:

• 4 markers
• 3 CDs
• plastic pipe (cut into ¼ inch pieces)
• Bertucci's take-out box
• metal coat hanger
• lots of tape
• lots of glue

We wanted to make the body of the car lighter. Instead of using the whole plastic Bertucci's box, we cut out a triangle frame to be used as the body. The CD wheels we crafter earlier were glued onto the frame. For the front wheel, we made a plastic ring that wrapped around and through the CD. This was then attatched to the front of the car. We noticed that the frame was a little flimsy, so we took a metal coat hanger and cut it to make a rod to support the two ends of the frame (not yet displayed in the picture above). To hold the balloon in place, we cut a small hole in a bottle cap and glued it to the back of the car. Once the balloon was blown up, the nozzle was inserted into the bottle cap. Then, we tested Philip 2.

The plastic frame was definitely too flimsy, even with the wire rod for support. We need something that is sturdy and will not flop around, but also light weight. It's off to A.C. Moore to buy some balsa wood!

Designing: Philip 1

Before even creating Philip, we both agreed that our balloon car had to be light weight and have little friction interfering with the wheels (And even before this, we decided to name our car Philip).

We decided to use:

• 4 CDs
• 4 markers
• plastic pipe (cut into ¼ inch pieces)
• Bertucci's take-out box
• tissue box
• balloon
• lots of tape

The idea was to use the markers as axles, but we soon realized that they were pretty heavy. So we removed the ink and the tips of the markers to make them lighter. The marker-axles were glued to the bottom of the Bertucci's box. Then, the CDs were placed on the axles with a ring of plastic pipe glued on either side to hold the wheels in place. We noticed that if we attatched our balloon to the car now, it would interfere with the spinning of the wheels. Carelessly, we grabbed a tissue box and glued it onto our car to raise the balloon above the wheels. Then we blew up our balloon, attatched it, and watched.



Fail. :P We're pretty sure that the tissue box was too heavy. It also wasn't very aerodynamic. We're going to need lighter materials if we want this car to go anywhere. It's back to the drawing board.

Balloon Car Project :)

We made a car!!!