Blogpost #7 - Final Blogpost

Original Rocket

Final Rocket

Our Experience:

Final Launch:

Listed below are the results of the required launches, though we did do additional launches.

First Launch: 3 seconds

• Stage of rocket: no modifications, 500 mL, 40 pumps

Second Launch: 1) 5 seconds, 2) 6 seconds

• Stage of rocket: 1) no modifications, 10 pumps, 500 mL 2) tape modification, 10 pumps, 750 mL

Third Launch: 3.41 seconds

• Stage of rocket: elongated, tape modification, fins, parachute, 40 psi, 500 mL

Fourth Launch: 5.4 seconds

• Stage of rocket: elongated, tape modification, fins, parachute, nose cone, 20 pumps, 500 mL

Final Launch: 10.7 seconds

• Stage of rocket: parachute, nose cone, 23052034820375 pumps (actually we just pumped it until it couldn’t be pumped any more), 600 mL

In order to be successful with this project, a clear understanding of the physics of how the water bottle rocket worked was very essential. Every modification we made affected the ultimate success of the rocket. We made a lot of modifications throughout the course of this project, and for our final rocket, we kept some of those modifications and abandoned others. At one point, we added four fins with the hope that our rocket would be more stabilized, which is the point of having fins. However, we may not have made ours correctly and they ended up not making much of a difference for us. We elongated our rocket as well. We then duct taped the entire rocket so that it would become more sturdy, but we came to realize that this plan was not the smartest because it made our rocket too heavy to stay in the air for a substantial amount of time. We also added a nose cone to hold the parachute in place and to have more weight at the top of the rocket. A parachute was added as well, and we experimented with a couple of parachutes throughout the course of the project--an octagon and a rectangle. The point was to try and design a parachute that would open correctly and catch the most air. This ended up being the rectangular parachute attached to the rocket with eight pieces of yarn. In the end, our parachute consisted of one 2L bottle with the previously mentioned parachute and a nose cone. This was enough, with the wind, to achieve our goal of 10 seconds. Weather was a big factor; some days were really sunny with relatively no wind, while others were really rainy and windy. All of the conditions had their pros and cons, but for us, the wind actually really helped us during our final launch.

Overall, we both really enjoyed our project, even though it could be stressful at times.  Watch our video to hear our experience (:

Blogpost #6 - Final Launch

Today was the last launch day for the bottle rocket project.  Yesterday we spent our free period 7 attempting to launch the rocket we had been working on from day 1.  The weather was actually nice, so we thought that the rocket would be able to have a higher air time.  After wasting 80 minutes of failed launches and modifications, we decided that the rocket would simply not work because it was too heavy to stay in the air for the time we were aiming for.  We made the decision to use a new 2-liter bottle and start from scratch.  In class today we only attached a parachute and a nose cone to our bottle. Surprisingly, that was enough to keep our rocket in the air for 10 seconds. Even though we were also a bit worried about the weather, which was really rainy and windy, we ended up learning that since the rocket was so much lighter, the parachute could actually catch the heavy winds and keep the rocket suspended in the air.  So, the wind factor actually really helped us out.  For the final launch, we used 600 mL of water and pumped a lot of air into our rocket so it would have a high air pressure and ultimately would be able to reach a higher height. The rocket really did not have many modifications, so the lesson we learned from this particular launch is that sometimes the simple things can work best. We uploaded 3 videos: 1) Our 3 second launch, 2) Our 10 second final launch, 3) Our celebratory video haha :D

Blogpost #5 - Fourth Launch

So today was the fourth launch of our rocket, and it wasn't exactly the best experience.  Thanks to the weather and equipment issues, it took us about 6 tries to set up and correctly launch our rocket.  Setting it up over and over while standing in konia freezing in a cloud, seriously was not the best experience -_- Anyway, today our rocket has been modified a lot.  The modifications include tape, fins, elongation, a parachute, and a nose cone.  Our air pump today didn't have something to read the psi, but we did about 20 pumps.  Our rocket managed to get fairly high, and the parachute did deploy, but we believe that our rocket should be able to get much higher into the air.  The air time for today's launch was about 5.4 seconds, so despite all of our modifications, we're going to have to modify things to add 5 more seconds to our time.  Our ideas to improve the air time include having a higher psi, making stronger fins, attaching the nose cone in a way that it will fall off when the rocket reaches it's highest point, and figuring out a way to make sure the parachute deploys successfully and slowly brings our rocket to the ground.  Hopefully with all of these changes, we will be able to have a successful (10+ seconds) launch.  In the video above, it's amazing that I got a video of everything before the launch, but somehow managed to stop it when our rocket was about 2 feet off the ground -_-

Blogpost #4 - Third Launch

We did our third rocket launch this past Friday. This time, we added a quite a few more modifications to our rocket. We elongated it, duct taped the entire thing, added four, evenly spaced fins, and attached a parachute. However, we did not use a nose cone. We also added 500 mL of water to the rocket.  When we finally tested it, its launch speed was about 40 psi and the time turned out to be 3.41 seconds. The parachute did not work as well as we hoped it would. Although we made our time a little over 3 seconds and had a parachute, thus fulfilling all of the requirements for this launch, we know we can definitely do better. For our next launch, we will add a nose cone and cut our parachute a little differently--hopefully this will help to keep our rocket in the air longer.

Blogpost #3 - Second Launch

Today was the second launch day of our bottle rocket.  First we timed the launch of a bottle with no modifications.  The time was between 4-5 seconds.  That surprised us that it could stay in the air that long with no modifications.  Luckily, the bottle didn’t land on the roof today.  The second launch we did today had a water modification.  Instead of using 500 mL, we used 750 mL.  According to the recorded time, it was about the same as our first launch, so for the moment we don’t believe that the amount of water makes a huge difference.  We plan to try the amount of water used again once our rocket is completed with all of our modifications.  We also did a third launch, even though it wasn’t required. We taped the outside of our bottle with duct tape in order to make it sturdier. The water we added for the fuel was about 500 mL. This time, the time it spent in the air was around 6 seconds, which was definitely longer than our previous two launches. On another important note, we pumped each rocket about 10 times. Tomorrow, we plan to make quite a few more modifications, including adding fins, a nose cone, and a parachute. Hopefully we will be able to get it to stay in the air for a longer time than the rockets did today! (The first video shows our launch with 750 mL, and the second video shows our launch with the duct tape modification).