She Dreamt She Could Fly

 But sadly, we never really got off the ground...

January 9th: National Balloon Ascension Day

On January 9th, 1793, the first balloon flight ever to take place in North America was declared a success, and balloon travel became more popular. Middle and I decided to try and recreate that historic moment...

Middle loves hot air balloons. Papa R and I took him and Gram-Gram to a balloon festival this past summer. 

At first, we thought about making a paper lantern and letting it go at the local park. But it was windy and we thought sending paper balloon with a fuel source attached out into the sky was probably not in anyone's best interest. I personally hate the idea of a helium filled balloon launch because of the impact of rubber/latex balloons falling into the environment. 

In order to get our holiday off the ground, we decided to make a modified bottle rocket and launch. The plan was to make a balloon out of a water bottle, then mix baking soda and vinegar to provide the boost. For those not familiar with this science project, this is what it should look like:

 I started by attaching skewers to our bottle to create both a stand and the "ropes"for our basket. Then we used a coffee filter with the bottom removed, since that's where our boost would be traveling through, as our "basket."


While I was busy attaching the first pieces, Middle was busy coloring our balloon. I took each of the balloon pieces and attached them to the bottle to finish our look.


Next it was time to get together our rocket/balloon fuel. Vinegar is poured into the bottle, baking soda is wrapped in a paper towel.


Now the way this is supposed to work is that the paper towel with the baking soda is inserted into the bottle, a cork is placed, the paper towel dissolves, the ingredients mix, pressure builds, the cork blows, and liftoff! 
That's not exactly how ours looked...


We tried three times, but we were running out of daylight so we called it a night. But before we came inside, momma tossed the balloon in the air, so Middle could see it "in the clouds." 😂


That blur just under the tree branch is the most air our poor little balloon saw for the evening. 
Momma is gonna revisit our baking soda delivery system and promised Middle we'd try again sometime this week to get a bottle off the ground.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm quite sure that you'll tell me, Just how I should feel today

Image
 Bonus cool points if you figured out that today is in fact... January 17th: Blue Monday "Blue Monday was created back in 2005 by Sky Travel Shop, a television channel devoted exclusively to programs about traveling, documentaries, and commercials for travel agencies. The folks at Sky Travel named this day “Blue Monday” and called it the most depressing day of the year for a variety of reasons. The date varies from year to year, depending on a variety of factors, such as weather, debt, the time that has passed since Christmas day, the time that has passed since we failed at fulfilling our New Year’s resolutions, low motivational levels connected with previous failures, and the need to take action." Whew 😅 What better day could there be than today to restart 365 Days of Celebration? The sickness that has had it's dirty teeth in the house seems to be subsiding in Middle and Little. Momma's still fairly miserable, but the show must go on. Let's beat the winter blues...
Read more

From Dino Calamity to a Big Day with Family

Image
 So it was supposed to be a big day in our house. Back in June, Papa R and I took Big, Middle, and Little to a dinosaur event at the National Air Force Museum just up the road. At the time, Middle was deep in his Dinosaur Train obsession so he loved anything and everything dinos. It was a free event, so we decided to see how he'd do meeting some very life-like "rawrs." Middle is definitely my sensitive soul, so we usually have to test new waters slowly with him. The day was a hit. He was in love with it all. Being that he enjoyed it so much, when I saw an ad the next month for an event called Dino Stroll, we quickly bought tickets. The event wasn't for months, so we thought it'd be a nice surprise. Fast forward to today, when the big event had finally arrived. I got the boys ready to go in their finest dino attire. We made the nearly hour long drive to downtown Cincinnati, waited in a long line to enter, and expected the same level of excitement as before. Middle,...
Read more

Back on Truck

Image
 I haven't posted in awhile, but I've been busy with some more involved projects. Posts on those should be coming soon. But Middle and I have still been crafting too.  I've mentioned before, Papa R loves the Christmas tree truck. We have decor around the house for every season that includes the truck. Whether it be hauling trees, pumpkins, flowers, or the good ole American flag, we've got it. So when I found a pin for the truck made out of craft sticks, we had to do it. The pin called for both the large size craft sticks and the minis. We only had the large ones, so I took the time to cut down a couple big ones into the shapes we needed. I had some extra pieces so I set those aside to be used elsewhere.  In the pin's instructions it said to just use regular glue and showed pictures of a glue stick. I tried and tried, but I could not get our trucks to hold together using a glue stick. Lucky for Middle, momma carries the big guns, we used Gorilla Glue. Once our basic ...
Read more