May
20
Construction of Potato Cannon Almost Complete
Our potato cannon is mostly constructed. The sweet smell of PVC cement filled the air as we assembled our 4′ long potato cannon. We used a 4″ pvc “Y” fitting with a screw cap at the top and a regular cap on the bottom. We then connected a 2″ PVC pipe from the “Y” fork that was 3′ long for the barrel.
How do you fire this thing again?
We conducted some introductory firing tests, and found that Butane doesn’t have the explosive force necessary to project a potato into space … or anywhere else for that matter. We tried propane. While it worked better, we were dismayed that it did not produce the boom that we expected. Next for the hairspray. We tried that, ignited it and our basement laboratory echoed with thunder. We found our propellant.
Hopefully next week we can have it combat ready. 