My fellow colleague Adam Furore and I been experimenting with alternate fuel sources to power our balloon. First I had the idea to make a simple napalm like substance out of powdered sugar and isopropyl alcohol. We tried mixing it with rubber cement and had a maximum burn time of 10 mins. with about 20 mL of the mix. Over the Weekend we made actual napalm out of polystyrene packing peanuts and regular gasoline. this napalm burned far longer and hotter than any of the other mixes thus far. When we burned our first test of the napalm on a sand pile it burned so hot, in fact, that we made a dirty glass by accident. To confirm this hypothesis, we did a second a second test burning about the same amount of napalm in a clean aluminum cup and all it produced was a thick layer of soot, leading us to the confirmation that we made a dirty glass.
The principal that make the balloons fly is Archimedes' Principal and Bernoulli's Principle. Hot air is less dense than cool air, so it rises.
Overall, it was a lot of fun making really flammable stuff and testing it in a scientific way.
