Reflection

       Throughout the design and building process of our balloon car, Claire and I had to go though many challenges, but in the end, we had one of the best balloon cars in the class! We first started building by using a water bottle as the body of the car. The water bottle wasn't an efficient piece to use though because there was a lot of surface area in the front of the bottle which caused the car to slow down. To fix this problem, Claire and I decided to subsitute the water bottle with a flat piece of cardboard, creating less air resistance. 
       Another mistake we made, was when we used four furniture coasters as the wheels. These types of wheels didn't work because they didn't weigh a lot, making our car go airborne. Our solution was by using a heavier set of wheels, which were some old round blocks we found in my basement. These were perfect to use because they applied just enough pressure against the ground to keep the car on the floor and not in the air, but the weight did not slow down the car's acceleration.
       The last idea that did not work very well was when we had the wheels spin around on the stick. The wheels wobbled around on the stick, which made the car turn in little circles. To fix this last situation, we solved it by gluing the wheels to the ends of the sticks. And then we had the sticks spin around inside a small straw that was glued to the bottom of the cardboard. This allowed our car to have rolling friction in a straight line.
       I, Kerri learned a lot throughout the process of creating and testing our balloon car, but if I had to choose the most valuable part of this learning experience was that "If at first you don't suceed, try try again." We had many trial and errors while making the car, but without those problems, we would have never learned from our mistakes. This was a great project to help us understand friction, motion, momentum, force, gravity, etc. while having fun at the same time!