Hot Air Balloon 2.0

      Similar to the egg lander if our class fails once the only solution is to try again!  Thus when we all failed the first hot air balloon we were challenged with the Hot Air Balloon 2.0.  Most of the class decided to move from straws to wire, which is exactly what our group did.  The wires should make the overall structure lighter in weight, since we concluded that the old hot air balloon failed because of the mass.  Thus we used an even lighter plastic and kept it small so that the bag would fill with hot air faster.
       However, when it came time to launch the balloons we hit a wall.
 turned out the bad was too small and the heat from the candles easily reached the top and started to melt our balloon!  The melting became so bad our balloon eventually achieved a hole.  Therefore ending our hot air balloon adventures in yet another failure.

Hot Air Balloon

Before Take Off

The Proposal
So as we all know by now Mr.Chung likes to present us with seemingly impossible tasks.  After finishing with out egg landers we have moved onto creating hot air balloons with the given materials: a plastic bag, 25 straws (from the egg lander), unlimited tape and 10 candles.  The requirements were to fly 5 cm above ground for 20 seconds.

The Design
Our design was to make a pentagon base with 2 candles per straw.  We also cut the bag in half so that it would be easier to fill with hot air.

The Results
As our group was excited for take off I began lighting the candles one by one.  Tanya and I are faithfully holding the corners of the bag slowly waiting for the bag to fill with enough hot air until it could fly.  However as Mr.Chung grew impatient he decided he would help and held the bag by the wrong corner and burnt a hole into our bag.  Thus ends the life of our hot air balloon.

Star Gazing!

Moon!

On September 27, 2012 Mr.Chung so awesomely invited a few astronomers to come and visit our Earth and Space class.  There were around five telescopes set up for our class to enjoy.  Most of the telescopes were focused on the moon, and one of the astronomers told me that he's seen a telescope so powerful he was able to see the shadow of a few of the moon landers.  However with the telescopes that night we were able to see the craters on moon!

When I first heard about star gazing I imagined a group of astronomers with huge telescopes slowly finding the planets and stars by hand.  I was extremely shocked to learn that all the modern telescopes have GPS tracking systems and that they all automatically even out their tripod legs to adjust to the uneven floor.  Not only so, they all have computers built into them that memorizes how the night sky should look every day.  After that all you need to do it select what planet, star or galaxy you want to find and it automatically finds it for you!  After that you can press play and a computer will recite to you the information on such phenomenons. One of the astronomers was explaining the story of Andromeda to me while he had a powerful laser that could trace each constellation for me to see, after that he gave me his tumblr so I could read up on his articles :P  All in all it was an educational and fun night!

Egg Lander 2.0

Egg goop

Failed Lander

Group!

The Design

After the failure of the last design our new group decided to design the lander with only accordions. This way all the impact should be absorbed and there will be no solid frame to cause additional stress to the egg.  We sandwiched our egg with two accordions on the top and bottom, while we protected the sides with six mini accordions.

The Results

The accordions were to short and too flimsy to hold the force of the falling egg, and the egg broke :( However two groups were able to succeed in keeping their eggs alive (one group in a coma) and we many now proceed onto the new project.

Egg Lander

The Design
Our Egg lander design was to build an accordion to absorb the shock of the ground when the egg fell.  However we also added long legs on all sides so that in case the lander fell sideways the egg still wouldn't touch the ground.  The egg itself sat in a weaved newspaper basket sandwiched between 2 accordions.  We then connected the 2 accordions with 4 straws that went perpendicular to the accordions.  To help stabilize the lander in air we added streamers to the top of the lander.

The Results
The egg cracker.  The 4 connecting straws took most of the impact however these 4 straws also happened to touch the egg and I estimate that this shock broke the egg.

The Modifications
For the next egg lander we make I intend to create more space around the egg and have minimal straws touching the egg.  I also think the structure should be bigger and symmetrical on all sides so the egg could fall any which way and still would be safe.