Burned again!!!!

These blasted things keep burning up!!  I'm still claiming the wind keeps pushing the balloons to die but the balloons don't seem even close to rising no matter how much heat we can feel in the balloon.  We're pretty much done with this design but I still want to send a flaming ball of tissue high into the air!

Right now we're looking for other designs of balloons.  Our engine just doesn't seem to be working so we're looking for alternatives.  We're probably going to switch from hot air balloons to Chinese sky lanterns, which was actually what I really wanted when we started making these.  Ever watch Tangled?  That's what I want.

I think that perhaps the engine is just too heavy for the poor tissue paper.  Perhaps applying the principle of burning cotton suspended in the center of the opening will get the paper balloon into the air.  We'll start constructing the new model once we've decided how we're going to do it.

The 9997th Way Not to Make a Hot Air Balloon

After our first balloon went up in flames we decided we needed to change a few things.  Obviously.
We didn't mess too much with the balloon itself, most of our modifications have been on the engine.  For our second balloon, we punctured the engine a little higher from the bottom to allow for more fuel and glued the cans together at the seams with rubber cement to try to keep them from slipping apart.  The glue had all weekend to dry and it was still REALLY STICKY!!!!!  When we tried to launch the second balloon both Nikki and Katie held the balloon up while I played with fire in the engine.  The balloon didn't rise and only got hot.  Then the glue melted from the can and fell apart.

After the engine fell off I kicked the can over.

So we went back in and took out the middle can, then secured the cans with brads (from here on referred to as Bradleys).  It didn't take much longer than five minutes, but in La Junta, weather changes from blizzard to Sahara in less time than that.
When we went back out to launch the third time, a horrible gale had begun.  We decided to try anyway.  We aren't sure if our new engine design was working because the wind kept pushing the balloon into itself and the tissue inevitably caught fire.  We watched in silent honor and slight disappointment as the tissue paper burned away in the wind.

We still like our engine design.  The Bradleys kept the cans together more efficiently than the rubber cement.  We've modified our fourth balloon a bit more.  We decided that since we had so much trouble with even the slightest breeze working to collapse our balloon we needed an inner frame.  We lined three of the inner seams of the balloon with a lightweight wire.  The engine is now made of one long Arizona tea can that brave Steven Sandoval donated to our cause.  I am still fond of my idea to brace the wires connecting the engine to the balloon and with Mr. Ludwig's help found a thicker wire, about the same thickness as a strand of barbed wire.  This is the wire that secures the engine to the balloon now and it works wonderfully.  As soon as we have a clear day we will launch our remodified balloon and pray it flies.  Once we get it in the air we can figure out how to make it explode over a certain trebuchet.

Let there be light!

FIRE!

We've finished our first hot air balloon! It caught on fire! :D

Our alcohol tipped over, then we let go of the balloon, it caught on fire, Mr. Ludwig chased it, and then the alcohol burned on the parking lot for awhile.

I believe these problems can be solved simply enough.  We need a deeper fuel pit for our engine and we'll need to secure the engine together better.

We've decided we'll make two balloons for the next test.  If the alcohol still fails we'll find another flammable substance to play with.  Once we've got a working balloon we can start figuring out the physics of hot air balloons.

This is going to be fantastic!

The Dawning of a New Era

With the Coyote Physics out of the way and long behind us, a new project rises on the horizon.  Almost literally.
Katie, Nikki, and I have started working on a hot air balloon.  The design we're using comes from M.W. Worman's design plans.  We halved the measurements to a more manageable size.  Last week we cut and pasted the parts of the tissue paper that we needed together.  This week we hope to have it in the air.
We'd like to learn the physical reasons why the hot air balloon rises.  We know it's to do with heat rising, but can we measure that?  Can we calculate the buoyancy of the hot air balloon?  And what can this teach us about thermophysics?  When this project is done, I'll use the information we gain from it to add to the physics wiki.

And once we've perfected the art of hot air balloon making, we'll use them to take over the world!!!