Yesterday was July 4th, a day of food, flags, fireworks, and fun. So last night my brother and I had our traditional lighting of the bottle rockets. Man, those things are fun. Too bad we only had about a dozen. What I wouldn't give to get my hands on a couple crates of those...

Also in our possession was a homemade potato launcher. Yes, you read that right, a potato launcher. Basically a couple pieces of plastic pipe with an igniter duck-taped to it and a potato shoved down the barrel. Able to launch a medium sized potato about 50 feet. Only thing is, it didn't work. For some reason the aerosol in the igntion chamber wouldn't ignite, so the potato remained lodged in the tube. Only after we took the potato out did it finally go off in a burst of flame that narrowly missed my leg.

So, potato cannon prototype one: Total Failure

We hope to try and make a better one for next year, possibly a pnuematic one if we can.