Science Component

In this group project we had the opportunity to learn many things about the gas laws and how they worked in many situations. For our group design we used a 27 degree angle for the cannon, this is because after inputting it into two formulas we found out that the 27 degree angle should give us our best distance out of the other angles that were previously mentioned. This project relates to the gas laws because during it we use Gay-Lussac's Law, where volume is constant and the pressure of the gas proportional to the temperature. When we light the ethanol the temperature will increase along with the pressure that is inside of the cannon. When this happens it be holding enough pressure inside so that when it does have enough pressure it will push the ball out and fire it into the air. When ethanol combusts and turns into carbon dioxide and water it will be the formula of C₂H₅OH + 3O₂ => 2CO₂ + 3H₂O this will be the balanced equation. The only difficulties that we had with building the actual cannon was when we had to poke the hole in the bottom of the canister. It proved to take up much our time and if we could I would have changed that maybe we could have just cut off the bottom of the canister and replace it with the lid instead.

For the results of the actual cannon shooting, come back and check this blog in spring!