Thursday, February 19, 2009

Why This Design?

Our group decided to use this desgin for a few different reasons. For starters we made a seperate chamber for the ethanol to be lit. One reason for creating this seperate chamber was to allow pressure to build up, we hoped this would help in projecting the ball further. Another reason for this chamber was to have a higher concentration of gas inside of our cannon. Our group decided to cut the barrel shorter because we believed that a shorther barrel, could also be seen as a shorther volume, would cause more pressure to build up. The reason that our gruop used the second tennis ball can as a base was first bescause we wanted our cannon to have the best stability and second because we wanted to get the angle of the cannon exact. Finally our gruop agreed to use a 40 degree angle because we though that really low angle would force the ball to hit the ground and a larger angle would just make the ball go up in a straight line. Over all we used a 40 degree angle because it was close to the middle.

2 comments:

  1. I liked how you used interal combustion to create a higher pressure. Another way to magnify the pressure was to create a hole(s) in the barrier between the gas chamber and the barrel.

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  2. Nice! I like how you explained the reasons behind each piece of the design. There are a few minor spelling errors, but it sounded good. I'm pretty sure we don't need to relate this portion to the essential question.

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