🎈 Balloon rockets and air: the whole packet

🎈 Balloon rockets and air · 2nd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · about $1 · 50 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change how big the balloon is blown up, then how far the balloon rocket travels along the string will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🎈 A balloon: 1 long or round one, and a spare
• 🧵 String or yarn: as long as the room, 5 m or more, and 3 short pieces
• 🥤 Straws: 1
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• ✂️ Kid scissors
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 🎈 Balloons

1. Thread a straw onto the long string, and tie it tight between two chair backs across the room.
2. Tie the three short strings into loops 30, 45 and 60 cm around.
3. Grown-up: A grown-up blows up the balloon until it just fills the 30 cm loop, and pinches the neck shut.
4. Tape the balloon under the straw, with its neck pointing back at the near chair.
5. Slide it back to a masking tape start line, and let go of the neck.
6. Measure how far the straw went from the start line, and write it down.
7. Do it two more times with the balloon the same size.
8. Grown-up: A grown-up blows it up to fill the 45 cm loop for three tries, then the 60 cm loop for three.
9. Find the middle distance for each size and draw a line graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Balloon size (around the middle)   I measured: how far the balloon rocket travels along the string (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: balloon size (around the middle) along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: tilt the string uphill at three slopes, test the 45 cm balloon on each, and draw both tests on one graph.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does more air make a balloon rocket go farther?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how big the balloon is blown up would change how far the balloon rocket travels along the string, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how big the balloon is blown up (30 cm around, 45 cm around, 60 cm around) and measured how far the balloon rocket travels along the string in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same balloon every time and the same straw on the same string, pulled tight the same, so only how big the balloon is blown up was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: 30 cm around and 60 cm around gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: tilt the string uphill at three slopes, test the 45 cm balloon on each, and draw both tests on one graph.