Testing and Modification

In our first trial, we had the balloon fly backwards before the sling made its arc. We determined that this was due to having flimsy shot pocket. Our solution was to staple the pocket's sides so that it resembles a trapezoid, with the large base the opening the balloon:

This solution over corrected the problem. The balloon wouldn't come out of the shot pocket. This is when we decided to switch to a new design for our sling, one where the pocket is supported twice on each side, rather than once:

After this adjustment, we saw that the balloon was releasing too early. We decided to give up on using a cloth shot pocket and switched to using a tupperware instead. We hoped this would provide enough structure to keep the balloon from launching too early:

This lead to the balloon being stuck in the tupperware, setting us back to when we had the trapezoid cloth design. We realized if we were to make the back side of the tupperware flexible that the balloon would roll off of the back and launch when we wanted it to:

This solved the problem, but we were only able to launch the balloon roughly 15 feet each time. This lead us to some deep thought and research. We learned that if we were to shorten the side of the arm with the sling, by moving the fulcrum up, the arm would have to swing less which would increase the velocity of the sling, launching the balloon with more velocity so it will travel farther. This approach worked!

The fulcrum was moved up. The empty hole

here is the old fulcrum.

Success!

Obligatory cool-angle shot