Rocket Building

When Kim and I were launching our rocket for the first couple times, it wasn't working so well. We had big fins and a skinny manilla folder cone attached to our bottle rocket. It would only stay in the air for an average of maybe 3 seconds, barely. To help lighten the mass to keep the rocket up longer, we would cut down the fins by an inch and then prepare to launch. We learned that big fins are only good to a certain extent, when it comes to being too long where it's weighing the rocket down and is unnecessary, it is useless.

Still after cutting and cutting down the fins, we then tried using less water. We figured with more air inside, the more the pressure can build and get a higher psi. With a higher pressure inside the rocket, the launch would go off with a higher velocity, going higher into the air.

After getting wet from the wet ground and the water accidentally getting poured on our cone, it got really muddy and a little soggy, it wasn't too sturdy so we came back in the class room to make a new cone. Having no more folders, we used a honey bunches of oats cereal box for the cone. It felt so much more stable than the other cone. As we launched, it's time in the air passed doubled from 3 seconds to 6.75 seconds. We figured out that it was the cone that was holding our rocket back.

We tried really hard to get our parachute to come out and tried many different folding techniques. We tried one that I found on the internet where I fold the rectangular chute the long way, then into many triangles. We tried to just loosely fold it and stuff it into our cone. We tried leaving a little piece or pieces of the chute out of the rocket so hopefully the air would pick it up and throw off the cone once at the top. However through all these tries, we couldn't get a successful parachute. The technique that probably worked the best though was to leave a little piece of the plastic parachute outside the cone, but when we would do this, we noticed the velocity of the rocket going up was slower and the rocket would go less high.

This applied to physics with the variable of air resistance, or the force of friction with the air. When launching up the air would push against the rocket, because with an upwards force against the air, the same force is coming back onto it, this is due to Newton's third law of motion, every action has a reaction. With air resistance, we would have to make the shape of our nose cone very pointed so it can cut through the air easier, having less friction on it to slow it down. Also with earth's acceleration of -9.8 meters per second per second, we really needed a nose cone because gravity is already pulling down on our rocket, we don't need air resistance to slow it even more.