Please Allow ET to Open Your Cooler Brandon Massengil Adam Ketron Matt Shearon Nick Vigder

Introduction/Materials Dominoes Ping Pong Ball Paper Nails PVC Piping Mentos Diet Coke String Funnel Cup Baseball Weights Cooler Duct Tape Staples Our goal was to create a very complex machine that performs a very simple task, in this case, opening a cooler.

Overview/Description 1.Dominoes knock ping pong ball down. 2.Ping pong ball hits nail triggering mentos to roll 3.Mentos falls into Diet Coke, which overflows filling a cup through a funnel 4.Cup tips scale, which pulls a string that pulls a nail out of the PVC piping. 5.Golf ball falls down ramp, hits out peg releasing ET. 6.Ball flies approximately 11 feet across the room. 7.Ball knocks out boards with weight resting on top of them. Weight falls. 8.Cooler opens!

Concepts Conservation of Energy/ Conservation of Rotational Energy Ping Pong Ball Mentos Golf Ball Projectile Motion Baseball toss (Trajectory Equation) Tension Release of the Golf Ball Pulley System of Cooler String Connecting Peg and ET Center of Mass Balancing The Cup Torque Firing ET/ Baseball Cooler Opening

According to Mythbusters, The caffeine, potassium benzoate, aspartame, and the carbonation in Diet Coke react with gelatin and gum arabic in Mentos to create the “jet effect.”