New Discovery!

I just found that the air in the Vortex Cannon not only have a certain mass with smoke, but also that the air in the MIDDLE of the ring is much stronger than the smoke carrying air. Refer to the following diagram done by flash:

The Movement of the particles(red being the stronger air and the black being normal atmosphere air)

A sad news

We failed to make a video of the smoke flare due to limited funds and area for the smoke to spread. Due to its pungent smell and intense smoke, we could not do it outside school or in the school as there might be complains of the intense smoke and smell and having no permission from school after the previous demonstration. However, you could refer the smoke flare to the below video for a concept of what the smoke flare is like, except the video's one is much intense as it has more than 10 times of our smoke flare(but it is still very dense, only having much less dense than this 100 ping pong balls one in the video)

100 Ping Pong Ball Smoke Bomb - Free videos are just a click away

The videos of our real vortex cannon launcher

Our Best Video of the 3 Videos Taken(The cream of the crop due to umpteen failure)

Smoke flare

We did our smoke flare, which is created using a satay stick, ping-pong balls, and aluminum foil. We cut the ping-pong balls into halves, we used 6 of them and we had gotten 12 halves. next, we pierced through the halves using the satay stick, then covered it with aluminum foil completely, leaving an entrance at the top for the smoke to escape. we then burnt the smoke flare on the entrance of the smoke flare. it created a lot of smoke, however, those gas produced might be very poisonous, as, first, it came from a plastic aluminum foil, and also, it is pungent.
We showed how our smoke flare worked and the demonstration to Ms Pua, however, we did not take a video. We bought 6 boxes of ping-pong balls each containing 6 of them, however, we only used one to show, and the other 5 boxes are destroyed due to accidents.
We will try again once we gathered enough funds and remake the smoke flare, and take a video of it again. We will succeed :D

Where our inspiration comes from

Project Idea

Introduction
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Hi to everyone here, we are a group of students from Ngee Ann Secondary,and our purpose of creating this blog is to introduce to you our project. The purpose of our project is to find out if normal air of a specific volume is heavier than air with smoke of the same volume, or both are the same in terms of mass. As far as we know, objects can have the same volume but different mass, for example, an inflated balloon with air inside, has a same volume as a balloon with water inside, however the balloon with water, has more mass. Why are we using a vortex cannon? A vortex cannon is a launcher, with air as its projectile. in this case, we uses both air and air with smoke, as the projectile. We will be using paper targets as a measure of how strong the cannon of each launch is. The projectile that is stronger, will be heavier, and therefor the paper target will be pushed away further from its starting point.

Prediction
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Firstly, we predicted that air that has a larger amount of smoke present whill have more weight than air of an indentical composition. As smoke particles are heavy, they would store more kinetic energy as the more mass a matter has, the more kinetic energy the mmatter has. Thus, air carrying smoke will be heavier as compared to pure air.

Experiment
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We are going to test this theory using a vortex cannon. A vortex cannon is a cannon that can fires a ring of air, or rather a air halo in a vortex configuration whichj alllows the projectile of air retains much kinetic energy. Which means, if smoke with air is present, it will have more kinetic energy and therefore, the distance the air halo travels when launched by the vortex cannon will be further as it contains more kinetic energy. Variables such as wind, the amount of both smoke and air present, the amount of energy used (the same person launching), and the starting point of the cannon when it launches.

We are intending to conduct this experiment on the field as it is wide enough to contain our vortex cannon’s projectile. A weak target, like the paper target, will be used to tell how much strength each launch of the cannon will be. However, as the vortex cannon range is not that good, a shorter range is better as it can be easier to predict the strength used, If the impact of whichever air is used is heavier, it proves that the particular air has more kinetic energy, and mass. For accuracy, we will conduct each launch 3 times respectively, and find the average, then compare. For this experiment we will need smoke, therefore, we will obtain the large amount of smoke we needed from incense sticks as they are more affordable and easy to get.

How to make a vortex cannon
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Items we need:

1. Bucket about 30cm wide in diameter prefered.

2. Garbage bag 1 dozen

3. Incense sticks 1 bunch

4. Slingshot rubber

5. Duct tape

How to make:

1. Firstly, cut a small hole at the bottom of the bucket, about 15cm wide in diameter

2. Use the garbage bags, quite a few is needed to cover the entrance of the bucket, not cut one. Extras are for replacement of damaged garbage bags

3. Use duct tape to stick the slingshot rubber to the garbage bag.

4. Burn 1 bunch of incense sticks at the entrance and leave the bucket face up as smoke travels upwards.
5. When ready pull back the slingshot rubber of a prefered strength, then launch, a halo of air will appear.

Group Members: Lee Kwot Sin, Marcus Tang, Tan Yean Keat, Tan Qi Soon.