Day Four: March 7, 2011

The modified bottle w/ laminated fins & (HUGE) cone

First attempt of the day

Today, was quite a challenge for my group members and I, though, luckily we (barely) made the required 5 second suspension time with 5.3 seconds. In the first diagram above, it depicts our first rocket of the day. As you can see for yourself, we only had four fins ~ attached by hot glue and duck tape. On top of our bottle is our parachute, which is covered by the lovely nose cone Taysia made out of recycled paper. Finally, we used a piece of a garbage bag to attach the nose cone to the body of the rocket (also one of today's requirements). In our first attempt (pictured above), the parachute did open, but it fell too quickly...giving our time at about 3~4 seconds. Unfortunately, the weather was not in favor with us today. The wind and rain may have been a factor in the poor performance of our second launch of the day (too embarrassing to show). Because our materials were not laminated in these series, the dampness of the nose cone and fins, may have had a significant role in the poorness of our second launch. But, we were able to make six new laminated fins, and a nice BIG nose cone before the period ended. In the end, the third launch was successful..but the parachute was tangled, limiting the time to 5.3 seconds, but for today, it'll have to do.

Day 3

Today we added a parachute in two ways. The first was by lightly taping it to on top of the rocket with no protection hoping it would just pop off, that didn't work. However what did work was placing the parachute inside the cone. We detached the cone and gently put the parachute inside. After when we reattached the cone, we did so barely so that it was only placed on top of the rocket. The pressure from the rocket going into the air is what most likely kept it on top but when the rocket reached the point where it was about to fall, the cone fell off and the parachute opened perfectly. So now that we have figured out what works best for the parachute, we now have to figure out how to get the rocket in the air longer. We're thinking that if we have a more aero-dynamic cone shape then the rocket will farther into the air because we increased the pressure to 50 from 60 and it didn't make much difference.

Day Two: March 1, 2011~Last Launch of the Day!

The final launch and video for the day! In this launch, we added a paper ball (crumpled pieces of paper) into the nose cone. In doing this, we had hoped that the ball would create a drag on the rocket, somewhat equal to the mass of the water, in order to slow down the rocket's flight.

Day Two: March 1, 2011~Second Launch of the Day!

In this video, our rocket had only three fins/wings, which had come off during the first launch of the day. Attached to the bottle is also a nose cone that we cut out of another 2 liter bottle.

Day Two: March 1, 2011

This video shows our group attempting to launch our rocket with

plastic wings as our first modification.

Day One: Feb 28, 2011

Day one of our rocket launching! This is actually just a regular

2 liter bottle being launched into the air for about 3 seconds

Lab Day #2

Today was our second launch day and we got to launch 3 times. But our challenge today was to modify our rockets with at least one modification. We choose to create fins using plastic and a cone at the top with the second bottle that we had. To do this we had to cut and glue the pieces on during the first half of class. We were told in class to try to make the top of the rocket have more weight because of the water weighing down on the bottom of the rocket. So, we used what we had and made a big paper ball and planning to stick it in our cone at the top of our rocket. The first launch we used just fins and the cone. The second time we did the same thing and both times our rocket seemed to have more pressure and stayed in the air for about 4 seconds. When adding the ball in the cone for the third launch of the day the rocket spun in circles while in the air because of the weight of the ball. Adding the ball didn’t help, the rocket still stayed in the air for about 4 seconds.