Final Blog Post

Our water bottle rocket launching process is officially over.  We can no longer make any modification nor launch again to see if changing anything will increase the rockets flight time.  All in all this was a great experience.  We learned how to engineer our own designs to create our own personal and unique rocket.  The basis of our design was to use a 2 L water bottle as the body of a rocket while later adding on fins as well as a nose cone to increase the rockets time in the air.  We started our design process by looking and mimicking other water bottle rockets we saw online.  

seeds2learn.com

The picture above was one of the pictures as a model to help us design our own rocket.  We thought the design process would be easy but man were we wrong.  We thought the most practical way to make fins using the resources we had were to construct them out of cardboard. But with a little insight from Coach Chris we realized that we would have to duct tape the fins if we wanted them to last.   We attached the fins by hot glue gunning them to the rockets body. Our next addition to our rocket was the nose cone.  We needed a nose cone that would add more weight to the top of the cone.  We constructed this by cutting off the top of one of our other water bottles and placing it on the opposite end of the fins.  This enabled us to created our parachute.  Our parachute construction was one of the hardest steps in our design process.  We tried two ways of attaching our parachute. Our first was duct taping the parachute onto the base of the rocket.  That way was kinda effective but at the same time didn't last 10 seconds in the air.  Our second method was that we used string to attach our parachute to the base and shockingly it worked out way better then the first method.  We faced many problems with our design but we somehow figured out a way to fix it.

We found out many things that worked and others that didn't.  The things that worked was a parachute that was attached by string.  The thing that didn't work that was categorized in that aspect was when the parachute was attached by a fishing line.   The fins actually worked well even if the sizes were not proportional.  The changes we could have made for the future is that we could have designed our last one to have a little sturdier fins.  If we had sturdier fins maybe they could have stayed on during the harsh landings our rocket took.  If they stayed on it could have saved us valuable time wasted on trying to glue them back on and launch in the allotted time left in the period.  In conclusion this lab was extremely fun and helped me realize that I can actually do things based on my groups design.  This was an interactive yet very educational project.  One of the best ones I was involved with all year.

Launch Day #5

     Today was our 5th launch day.  It was a very unsuccessful day.  Going into this launch we thought that we could have accomplished our goal if we modeled our rocket exactly the same as our previous rocket that flew over the building.  We ran into one small problem, there was no string to attach the parachute to the rocket.  We also learned today that we would have to somehow leave on cone attached to our rocket which would weight our rocket down and draw it to the ground faster.  Our first launch was a failure in itself.  The pump didn't pump pressure into the bottle and was stuck on there for a good 5 minutes.  We then had to launch it again.  We pumped 90 psi into our rocket and it was about 1/2 way full of water.  Our time was 4.7 seconds which was a disappointment not only because our time was so low but also because all of our fins came off.  We figured out that our time was so low because our parachute didn't deploy because our cone was too tight.  Our next launch we decided to launch it without fins.  Surprisingly it lasted a good 9.2 seconds but that was only because our cone wasn't attached to our rocket.  That launch we again pumped it to 90 psi and it was 1/4th of the way full.  Unfortunately today we didn't achieve our goal of 10 seconds which resulted in a major failure.

Lauch Day #4 Video

Lauch Day #4

Today was our fourth day launching our rockets.  We had a really hard time obtaining a time of 5 seconds. We had 3 trial runs with our original design (One with 3 fins and our parachute taped on) The times for those three trial runs were 4.5 seconds, 4.9 seconds and 3.0 seconds.   For the three trials we also tried to compile the same data too see if there was a difference.  We tried to reach 75 psi and we filled the rocket 1/2 way full with water. From there we established that we needed to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we were doing wrong.  So we analyzed our entire rocket and reconstructed it so that there would again have 3 fins but this time it would have a parachute attached by string.  On our fourth launch of the day we testing out new model out.  I surprisingly worked.  Our rocket not only passed the 5 second mark but it also got lost in the performing arts buildings. Unfortunately we have to reconstruct our rocket from scratch :(

Day 3 of the launchings-- March 3rd

Today was a successful launching day. Our water bottle rocket stayed in the air for 5 seconds. Before launching we made some adjustments. First we added another fin to our water bottle rocket so there were three fins which would make it more stable. We then added a parachute which was constructed of a plastic bag which was secured by duct tape. It was taped onto the top of the bottle around the circumference. We added a cone on top of the parachute as well which then flew off so the parachute could deploy. To weigh the cone down, we added the bottle cap. We pumped up the psi to 60 and filled the bottle one fourth of the way with water. We still have more adjustments to make, but it was good enough to pass for today.

Day 2 Launch

Today Brittany was absent so Leila helped me with todays launch.  We had to do 2 different launches.  One was a launch with no changes and the other one was a launch with an alteration.  The first launch we did today was the a launch with just the 2-liter bottle (no change).  For both launches we put 50 psi of pressure into the water bottle and filled it with 1/4th water.  It was kind of like another attempt from yesterdays failed launch.  What we did differently was we used a launch system that had 3 guide sticks to prevent it from drifting while a person was pumping pressure into the bottle.  We thought that I would work out completely fine but it somehow still managed to drift and actually was shot towards a group of innocent bystanders.  Here is a video on how the first launch went. 

For our second launch we decided to put fins on the side of our rocket to create more stability in our rocket's flight.  Our fins were made out of cardboard because it is a light material and would not weigh the rocket down.  We initially had 3 fins on our rocket but when we got the launching station there was a malfunction and one accidentally fell off.  Our rocket with 2 fins actually had a better flight time because it seemed like it was a little more balanced then the rocket with no change.

joannenova.com.au

Day 1 Launch

In a nutshell our day 1 launch was pretty unsuccessful. We followed the directions and outcome consisted of me getting sprayed by the water (fuel) for the water bottle rocket.  We used a 2-liter Coke bottle as the body of our rocket.  For this first launch we did no modifications which means we used no fins, no parachutes, etc. Our first step was to fill 1/4 of the bottle with water to use as fuel.  The next step was to attach the bottle to the launcher.  I think something was wrong with our rocket launcher because at first our water bottle was not staying but we found a way that we thought the rocket was balanced.  Then we started to pump air into the bottle using a bicycle pump.  We needed it to reach 50 psi so that it would shoot into the air.  We started to pump but then the bottle started tilting and before you know it it shot sidewards and sprayed me.  I think tomorrow we have to clearly get a working launcher so the same thing doesnt happen again