Nicki's Newton Scooter :)

It may be kind of hard to see what the text in the picture says, but it says, "Action: I let go of the place were the air pressure escapes" and "Reaction: Balloon travels on string in the opposite direction that the air is escaping"



Newton's 1st law is that in object in motion stays in motion (at same velocity) and an object at rest stays at rest unless an unbalanced force is acted upon it (and changes velocity.) That connects to my Newton Scooter because my scooter wasn't in motion until an unbalanced force (me letting go for the air to escape) acted upon it. When I let go and the balloon, the air escaped and the balloon traveled at a constant velocity and stayed traveling until it reached the end of the line and fell off. In Newton's 3rd law, it states that with every action, there is an equal opposite reaction. That connects to my scooter because when I let go of the balloon (action) it traveled in the opposite direction that the air pressure was escaping. At first, my plan for my scooter was to make it rubberband powered. Unfortunately, that didn't work out so I started making a balloon powered car with wheels. The main challenge was that the scooter wouldn't move because the scooter was just too heavy for the balloon. To fix that problem, I tried "shedding layers" off my car to make it lighter- it didn't work, so I tried adding 2 balloons to have more power. Once while I was testing with the two balloons, I noticed that it wouldn't move either because the wheels weren't stable. By then, I needed to get a scooter in to test in class. My Dad re-read the directions for the Newton's Scooters and realized that the scooter could travel though the air. We made a scooter with a balloon, string, and a tapioca straw, and it worked! When I was testing, the balloon would travel the distance needed to qualify as a scooter, but then the balloon would fall off of the string. Before, I taped the balloon to the string with blue tape, but it would still fall off. If I could change something, I would want to find a way so the balloon wouldn't fall off of the balloon while it rides on the track. It may sound strange, but my favorite part of my scooter is the tapioca straw because the hole were you drink from is so big that there isn't much friction between the straw and the string. By Nicki Aquino