In the past few weeks, we have completely overhauled our design. We were toying with the idea of making a cone where the ping pong ball would drop into at the end of the tube, then bounce off a plate and into the mason jar, but that got nixed. After we got a lecture from Dr. Mingori about conservation of energy and how springs work in a series versus in parallel configuration, we decided that the original straight path wasn't going to cut it. I was very excited about the cone and I took it upon myself to find a cone. I came up with a cone that was completely falling apart and caked in dirt and oil. Now that we are not using the cone, I am helping build the stands for our path. Dr. Mingori also recommended we drill holes in our PVC pipe to allow for airflow around the ping pong ball. After we drilled holes in one of our tubes, Micah and I tested the solid pipe against the one that had holes in it, and we saw a noticeable difference. The ball that  went down the track with holes in it went substantially faster. In our new design, the track will look like an inverted V. We will still use the spring launching mechanism, and that design is finalized. Our projected calendar can be found here.