Hot Air Balloon 1

With no success to our egg landers, we were determined to make a working hot air balloon this time.
The materials allowed were 10 straws, some tape, a plastic bag that you can cut to your preferred size.
The balloon was supposed to run on a maximum of 10 birthday candles. This was the tricky part: more candles meant more fuel, but they also meant a heavier mass. The trick was to find the right balance.

Our design was really simple. It consisted of five straws joining each other in a shape of a star. The bendy ends of the straws stood up perpendicularly to allow the bag to be taped on. Since our candle holder was quite large (and thus heavy), we decided to use all 10 birthday candles. We cut out small holes in the straws so that the candles can fit snugly in them. Next, we tried to tape our candle holder's perpendicular ends to the bag.

The problem was, the bag was too big (it was a regular sized garbage bin bag). We were running out of time, so we didn't bother to cut the bag into a smaller size and instead tried to tape the whole bag. However the tape wasn't sticky enough. Our attempts were fruitless as the tape just fell off. We didn't have time to test our balloon but it would've probably failed anyway.


To sum it up, our hot air balloon failed, but so did everyone else's. In my group's defence I guess we didn't do that bad. :)