Preculmintaion Prep.

Today I explored parachutes and catapults (like the one I used yesterday). It was fun because when I used the catapult, my object, which was a small motor landed in the same spot several times, and it was successful. Then I took notes on Anna's catapulting. We figured if the object is at more of a vertical angle, it will be more accurate, than at a horizontal angle. We also took not on the difference between air-resistant objects, and non air-resistant objects.

Some questions I have:
1. What makes objects more or less air-resistant?

Mini Culmination Prep

Today Lena, Anna and I explored the earth launch lever (shown in picture.) We conducted several launch trials. The purpose of this is to deliver parks to a exact location. First you would put an object on one end, and then drop a bag to launch the object. The point is to make the object hit an exact location once it touches "mars" Anna and I measured from where to drop the bag. We setteled on 30' inches, and it worked, and the object hit the specified location! We didn't even hit a dead spot ever.

Lego Robotics

Today, Le'Jayah and I learned about rover's and communication. It was fun to experiment with the rover and make it do tricks and such. First, we tried to make it go through the "gates" it worked and was pretty cool. Then, we experimented and tried to make the rover make a square, it was unsuccessful. Some struggels we encountered were when we tried to pick up rocks, and we couldn't figure out how to do that. Some questions I have are:
1. How do you make it move rocks?
2. What are some types of moves that can help on mars?

Remote Repairs

Today Jackie, Lucy, and I used skype in order to communicate and put objects together. Each of us took turns explaining how to put specific peices together, and then created an object to be used in outter space. It was fun, I really liked this expirement. It made me relize how important communication really is. Some struggles we encountered were hearing each other, and explaining objects. Some object's, I didn't know what to call them, because I had never had the exlain anything like that before.

Some questions I have are:

1. How do you determine name's for objects that don't really resemble anything?

Launching from the Moon

Today Lucy, Alaina, and I worked on Launching various materials to the yellow hook on the wall. Our budget was 4.7 million. Each launch costed $120,000 and each failure costed $22,000, due to loss of fuel. Our very first launch was just the straw and we only used 1 balloon. It was successful. Next we tried to launch a blue foam ball, and it failed. After that, all of ur launches failed, and we ended up not spending even close to 4.7 million. We used balloons to get up to the orange hook.

Some questions I have:
Why did sometimes the launch go about 12 inches, when 2 fully blown up balloon's we're connected?
How many balloons would it take to launch ALL the materials up the the "moon a.k.a the orange hook?"

Bernoulli's Law

A few days ago our class learned about Bernoulli's Law. Bernoulli's Principle states that "as the speed of a moving fluid increases, the pressure within the fluid decreases." After that, we presented our ideas of Bernoulli's law. Some of them included:
Waterfalls, and rivers. Some people presented ideas like this; Blowing on a piece of paper, blowing on a balloon, and a hair dryer blowing a ping pong ball. All of these exercises prove that, the faster a fluid (a fluid can a liquid or gas) travels over a surface, the less time it has to push on that surface. Therefor, the surface moves in that direction. Two key things to remember are; Speed of the fluid is inversely related to pressure. (AND..) Motion is always towards the area of low pressure.