Chemical Reaction Car Miri Goldade, Cody Toth, Christopher Jenks

1. Chemical Reaction Car Miri Goldade, Cody Toth, Christopher Jenks

2. Theoretical Yields:Potassium Iodide and Hydrogen Peroxide; Sodium Bicarbonate and Acetic Acid V=0.5L (volume of bottle) R= 0.08205 L atm/mol K T= 283 K (room was about 10 degrees celcius) P= about 5atm to make the car go 25 feet Amounts of Reactants needed: (KI is a catalyst so we just guessed and checked the amount)

3. Giselle

4. Reaction 1: Potassium Iodide and Hydrogen Peroxide Reaction 2: Baking Soda and Vinegar

5. Conclusions • The potassium and iodide reaction was too unpredictable and dangerous. Basically, the exothermic reaction blew up our bottle too many times, and never reliably moved the car. • The baking soda and vinegar reaction was safe, but very unreliable, and with minor changes in amounts of either reactant, drastic distance results would occur. In our tests, the car would go past 25 feet, but in the competition our car only went about 18 feet at the farthest, and twice only going a few feet due to cap sealing issues. • Improvements: • Construct a sturdier car, using lighter wheels with a lower static friction coefficient, and a way that the bottle could lay flat. • Try different chemical reactions with new reliable chemicals. Use a fuel cell, probably hydrogen, which would give much more reliability. • Use better containment vessels. Instead of low quality plastic bottles with a bad sealing lid, a metal container made to hold a lot of pressure would have sufficed. Also a different, more reliable, non-leaky release method would have helped, such as a funneled nose.