Jesse's Newton Scooter Blog

Newton’s first law is, “Objects in motion stay in motion until acted upon by a force. An objects at rest stays in rest until acted upon by a force.” How my car relates to Newton’s first law is that the car doesn’t move until I blow up the balloon. Therefore, its stays in rest until the force of the air coming out of the balloon pushes the car forwards. It stays in motion until the balloon runs out of air.

Newton’s second law states that, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” How my scooter relates to the second law is that the air from the balloon pushes at the air that is in the room, which is the action. The air that isn’t coming from the balloon pushes back, that is the equal and opposite reaction. Both forces pushing each other make the car go forwards.

I have had many challenges during this project. At first I tried to make a car made entirely of wood with four wheels made out of straws and cardboard. It was way too heavy and didn’t move at all. So, I changed my idea to a lighter, strawberry cart frame. But the wheels still didn’t work, and I was stuck with another failed attempt at a Newton Car. I kept trying to make the car work, but it never did. I decided that using wheels just wouldn’t work. I finally decided to not use wheels at all and attached two straws, put a string through one and a balloon on the other one. The string acts as a road and the balloon acts as the engine. Coco helped me build my scooter and now I have a functional Newton car.

My favorite part of the car is how it works without touching the floor. It is attached to a string that you tie to two chairs. The car uses the string as a zipline. The scooter stays within the meter wide boundary and can move quickly.

A thing that I would still like to fix is the fact that it takes a few seconds to move. Since it works above the ground, if it is too close to the ground it won’t move. If the balloon is inflated all the way, it creates too much friction against the ground and the scooter will not move until the balloon doesn’t touch the ground anymore. A way I can fix this is by moving the strings farther up the chair.