7/12 ROCKET POWER!

Our assignment is to build a water bottle rocket that will stay in the air for at least 10 seconds when launched using a water-pressure system. Sam and I got to work with this challenging assignment

First we took our two 2L bottles and lengthened our entire rocket by cutting out bottom of the second and fastening it to the bottom of the outer one. Now we had two caps and the rocket is longer and more stable!

 

Next, it was time to add fins to our rocket. We measured how large we wanted them based on the fact that we didn't want them to big too big and weigh down the rocket, but we needed them to be large enough to provide stability and possibly some air resistance. We used cardboard because its thick and convenient and wrapped it in water proof duct-tape. Then we secured it to the base of the the rocket using more duct-tape and a hot glue gun.

 

Now it was parachute time! We took a thin plastic bag and shortened a little bit. then we poked four holes near its base and strung holes through it. Then we connected all those strings to a base of tape and hot glue. From that base we took two strings that we taped directly to the bottle, then we tucked the entire parachute into the top hole of the rocket.

It was launch time! The goal was 5 seconds, and unfortunately things didn't go out way... at all. On our first trial we got around 3.5 seconds. We were a little bit surprised but figured it was just an unlucky launch that could be easily improved with simple tweaks. On our second try the rocket didn't even shoot straight up and we only had a 1.7 flight time. On both trials our parachute didn't deploy at all. We've definitely our work cut out for us if we're going to make 10 seconds tomorrow... oh do we? ha ha ha... Ha Ha Ha... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! *evil laugh* *lightning strike*