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Coconut:As Adam continued work on his piston, which was only in solidworks and thus could not be tested, we decided to work on various fuels for the piston. To test these, we decided that we would create an edible, jet propelled car out of a hollowed out coconut. We decided that we would work hard at this point to concentrate on making something edible, as the wood piston was not. We began with three potential fuel sources: Coke and mentos, vinegar and baking soda, and alka seltzer and water.The first that we tested was coke and mentos. We had seen this all over the internet, and on mythbusters, so we thought that it would be a really good idea since it seemed to be so powerful. However, after multiple attempts we still failed to get any real violent reaction. For some reason, when we mashed up the mentos, which we had to do to load them into the coconut, they lost their reactivity with the coke. So we set this idea aside and moved on to vinegar and baking soda. We had all seen vinegar and baking soda before for volcano eruptions in middle school, and we thought that this might have enough force to power the piston. We tested the reaction, and it was relatively successful. We then tried it with a piece of toilet paper holding the baking soda as a method of timed release, and although this worked to delay the reaction the toilet paper clogged the hole causing the vinegar to bubble out of every tiny pore on the coconut. Basically, we decided that this was a plausible method. Finally, we had seen alka seltzer rockets on youtube, and we thought that this might work. When alka seltzer dissolves, a gas is created, and after building up pressure we thought we could release it and propel the coconut. The only problem was the fact that the air could escape through the tiny pores mentioned above. After settling upon vinegar and baking soda as our reaction of choice, we created an edible set of wheels. We used lolli pop sticks (paper, which you could eat if you wanted), held on by paper mache made from water and flour. We then attached carrot wheels and carrot collars to hold the wheels in place. In our next reaction, we actually got a little jump out of the coconut even though it burst through the cracks more strongly then ever before. To fix these cracks we attempted to create an edible sealant. For this we used a mixture of flour, syrup, and honey which became a thick paste. We hoped that it would harden enough to seal the holes, but it never truly cured. For this reason, we realized that we would have to use something other than our coconut chamber for the reaction with the piston, as we would need to eliminate any losses of pressure that we could. |
  Coconut Nozzle Carrot Wheels   Coconut Size Pressure Hole  
Coconut Car Chocolate Frosting |