Skylar Brooks, Callie Adams

Physics/Period 2
Sparrow
September 16, 2016
Balloon Car Lab Write Up
Introduction: A balloon racer is a home made car that uses the force of the air in a balloon to
move a car in the opposite motion. The pressure of the air in the balloon should propel the car
forward as the air is being released. Newtons Third Law of motion is for every action, there is
an equal and opposite reaction. This law applies to the balloon cars in the fact that for the car to
propel forward, the balloon has to have an equal force in the opposite direction in order to move
the car.

Materials: Standard plastic water bottle, four plastic water bottle caps, two wooden skewers cut
down to be slightly longer than the width of the bottle, three drinking straws--two cut down to
the width of the bottle and one full-length, high quality duct tape, electrical tape (for its
flexibility and strength), balloon, graphite dry lubricant, hot glue. For decoration, we used spray
paint and acrylic paint.

Procedure: Originally, we built a car from a larger bottle with thicker wheels and a thicker axle,
but it proved to be too heavy, so we scrapped it and started again. This time, we punctured a hole
in the center of one side of a normal-sized water bottle so that we could insert a drinking straw
through the center and out of the mouth of the bottle. Then we fixed the smaller-cut drinking
straws to the bottom of the car with duct tape and slipped skewers through, using graphite dry
lubricant to lessen the friction created when the skewers spun in the straws. To attach the
bottlecaps to the axles, we poked a hole through the center of each cap and slid it on, using hot
glue to keep it perfectly aligned. We used electrical tape to seal the balloon to the straw on top of
the bottle, and more tape to hold the straw securely in place. The balloon could then be inflated
by blowing through the straw without air escaping. To add aesthetic appeal, we spray-painted the
whole car gold, and used white acrylic paint as an accent.

Results: Our car's total displacement was exactly five meters. The average velocity of our care
for those five meters is .522 meters per second. Our car just so happened to stop right at the
finish line so we went the whole distance we needed to but our velocity at five meters was zero
meters per second. The car's average acceleration in the five meters is .055 meters per second per
second.

Conclusion: To improve the car, we could have experimented with balloon size and quantity,
such as using a larger balloon or using multiple balloons. We also could have done a bit more
fine-tuning, such as adjusting the angle at which the straw protruded from the bottle. We
discovered some issues in fixing the car to run in a straight path; this was amended by toying
with the alignment of the axles until it rolled in a reasonably straight path. Also, we discovered
that the car would only move the whole five yards if it was running on a brand new balloon--a
balloon that had been blown up even once before wouldnt allow the car to go the distance.
Fortunately, this problem was quickly remedied and our car was successful--it went exactly 5
meters.