Fire the cannons!

This project has a lot to do with Boyles gas law.  Boyles gas law states that pressure and volume are indirectly proportional, meaning, when one goes up the other goes down.  The way my team and I related this to our project is that we made the barrel of the cannon small so when we put the nerf ball into the barrel more pressure would build up and shoot the nerf ball farther.

The way we will launch the cannons is by creating the chemical reaction between ethanol and oxygen in the bottom of the barrel.  This should throw the nerf ball.

Balanced Chemical Equation: 

C₂H₅OH+3O₂  à 2CO₂+3H₂O   

Stay tuned in the spring for the launch of the cannons!!!

Procedure

1.   First our group thought of the angle of the barrel that would propel the nerf ball a descent distance.

2.   Then we sketched what the cannon would look like, keeping the angle of the barrel in mind.

3.   We then marked on the tennis ball tubes where we were going to cut.  On one of the tubes we marked a 45 degree angle on the side to refer to when cutting.

4.   Our team then taped the tubes together following the guidelines of our sketch and marks on the tubes.

5.   Finally we put our initials on our cannon and turned it into our teacher.

Math Component

A cannonball is shot upward from the upper deck of a fort with an initial velocity of 192 feet per second.  The deck is 32 feet above the ground. 

Quadratic Model: -16t²+192t+32

1.     How high does the cannonball go?  608 ft (Remember you are looking for a specific part of the vertex.)

2.     How long is the cannonball in the air? 12 seconds (Remember you can use the quadratic formula.)

Steps to Solve:

1.     Plug the numbers from the situation above into the quadratic model representing an object thrown into the air.

2.     Then plug the numbers into the function that finds the X of the vertex of the parabola (-b/2a).

3.     When the X of the vertex is obtained plug that number into the quadratic model and that will be how high the cannon goes.

4.     Plug the quadratic model into the calculator and go to the table.  The highest number under the X column (before the numbers start to turn negative) will be how long the cannonball stayed in the air.

English Component

Argument of the Ethics of Weapon Development:
There is a lot of argument on whether the development of weapons is right or wrong.  The good thing about developing weapons is that you can feel safer with something that can protect you in your home or in your nation.  The bad thing about developing weapons is it provokes violence between people and countries.  It also costs a lot of money to keep inventing new weapons for the military.

I personally do not feel it was right to give weapons to the boy soldiers in Sierra Leone.  It created more violence and chaos in an already corrupt country.  Judging by what happened to Ishmael Beah in his memior A Long Way Gone, weapons took away his childhood and made him into a moster who was plagued in the mind.