Shoot for the stars!

  Today was the final launch day! We were ready from the beginning to launch! Our rocket consisted of two, two liter soda bottles. One was cut at the top and the bottom so that it made a cylinder that was open on both sides. We attached the second bottle to the bottom of the first using orange duct tape. We then duct taped the whole bottle so that it would increase stability of the bottle. We used two bottles so that it would increase stability as well. Then we added 3, 5-inch fins to the bottom of our rocket! We then added 3 small, 2.5- inch fins to the top of the bottle to help keep the cone on longer and keep it stable. We added the other fins so that it increased even more stability. Stability for us was the key because if our rocket were to be  wobbly in the sky then it wouldn't be good. We also created a trash bag parachute so that it would decrease the velocity on the way down. We used a orange athletic cone as our cone and used clay to increase mass to keep the cone on longer and to help increase velocity of our rocket. We used about half and half water and pressure because you need enough pressure to get it high but you need water for fuel. We used about 1 liter of water. We used duct tape to tape our parachute to the inside of our bottle. This is a picture of our rocket drawing with the labels of what was inside the rocket.

          

            The first launch of the day we only got about 6.47 seconds which was ok for us but we wanted even more! So we launched again and got about 8.6 seconds and we were happy it got better but we realized our fins were starting to rip off the rocket so we replaced them with the extra set of fins that we made! The fins were light enough to help the bottle but sturdy enough to not get flimsy! We added a little more mass and then went in for the third try. At first when we launched our rocket didn't go that high so we got sad but then we realized that the wind was pulling our rocket up because of the lightness of the rocket! Soon the rocket went up up up and over the trees! It kept going it went out of the rock wall in Punahou and we were happy but scared because what if the rocket landed ON THE STREET AND CAUSED AN ACCIDENT!! It finally landed and Mr. Blake and Jon told us our time was 41.2 SECONDS! WE WERE SO HAPPY! We thought getting to 10 was impossible but 4x that amount was unheard of!

Our average for our amount of launches was 15.9 seconds WOOOOOO!!! And our max time was 41.2 seconds and the class average was 6.32 seconds!

            I learned that mass greatly affects how your rocket works because when we had not enough mass in our cone that the cone wouldn't stay on…. But when we put enough mass the cone stayed on longer! We also learned that if the parachute didn’t have enough "jelly fish" effect then the rocket would come down too fast. Our parachute kept getting tangle and it was frustrating because we had to start over and undo the parachute and re-tie it! >.<

            I actually got frustrated a lot but I was so happy that we got 41.2 and really enjoyed doing this project! :)