Rocket Building

In class we are working on water bottle rockets. These are made from 2 L bottles with water inside being pressurized from air being pumped in, which should have a psi around 60. My partner Kim and I brought in two 2 L bottles of soda for the rocket body, cereal boxes to cut out the cardboard for fins, a manilla folder to make the nose cone, a plastic garbage bag to make the parachute, kite twine to connect the nose and parachute to the rocket, and duct tape to piece everything together. We first picked the bottle with the smallest mass to keep whole because we figured with a smaller body mass of the rocket, it will be easier to keep in the air without the weight pulling it down. We then decided on making a very slender, long nose cone from the folder. With a longer cone, the more narrow it is and fights less air resistance helping the rocket to go faster. We cut out 4 fins, all very long and thin to help keep the rocket straight in the air and also long to have less friction with the air going on. After being cut, we taped the fins with duck tape to make it more stable, the less shaky it is the more likely it will stabilize the rocket and keep it from breaking. The parachute was very tricky, we are still trying to learn how to hold it because during the launch it didn't open. Hopefully with using even more tips, we can keep our rocket in the air for more than 10 seconds.