My daughter and I are at a loss for what to do for a good but relatively inexpensive science fair project; an idea that would have required getting a wing segment to rise in a wind tunnel didn't work out, which makes the rest of that experiment impossible. We're now looking at doing something with a rubber chicken (we have one lying around the house, and can get another). The rubber chicken has a bumpy skin. If we get another chicken, and smear something all over the surface of one chicken until its surface is smooth, but leave the surface of the other chicken alone, we can stick a rocket up each chicken's bottom and launch them, comparing altitudes to estimate the effect of surface drag. We would need to add the equivalent amount of weight to the other chicken, of course, but we'd do that internally. My question is, does anyone have any thoughts about what to smear it with? I'm leaning toward epoxy (since it would give the smoothed chicken a lot of rigidity, we'd need to smear the other chicken internally so it wouldn't flop around in the air, which the smoothed chicken won't be doing), but I'd be open to other suggestions.
- posted
19 years ago