Memories

A compilation of our rocket memories. Enjoy...

The End of the "Rocket Bottle" era

            On Wednesday, March 9th, the “Rocket Bottle” era ended. It was our last day, and really the only day that truly counted, to make 10 seconds. Our final attempts at making this standard were nothing short of a complete fail. The journey to our rocket’s last day was long, entertaining and definitely a learning process. When we started out everyone launched their rocket the same way; no modifications to the rocket, filled 1/5 of the way with water and a PSI of approximately 50. The results of that launch were satisfactory. The rocket went a great distance on the y-axis (vertical) and it was in the air for a decent amount of time. Though we were pleased with our results, we knew we had to make modification to our rocket to make it stay in the air for 10 seconds.  During the next 4 launch days we launched a myriad of times. We made adjustments to most of the launches; seeing what worked, what didn’t, adding modifications, improving the ones that seemed to work and removing what didn’t. Listed below are the details of each launch: time in air, PSI used, and modifications made. Our rocket launched peaked on the third day, staying in the air for 10. 5 seconds.  The cone was not attached to the rocket thus it fell off when we launched it. The goal of that day was to have a parachute that deployed, which we did have. The following day, seeing as how our rocket stayed in the air for already the 10 seconds needed, we made no modifications to our rocket. That time, though, our rocket barely cleared 5 seconds in the air. Confused, we tried launching again with no prevail. It was then that we realized the weather conditions affected our rocket launch more than we expected. For the final launch day, we prayed for good weather conditions because we knew that was the only thing that would allow us to meet the time requirement. Unfortunately, the weather conditions were not in our favor. Through out this rocket-launching odyssey we learned a few things:

1. Fins should be duct taped to the rocket, not just hot glued. They will come off when launching if not duct taped.

2. The higher the PSI, the better.

3. Weather conditions are very important. They can and will mess up your launch.

 4. The lighter the rocket, the more effective the parachute will be. i.e. having your nose cone attached to, instead of just sitting on, the rocket will weigh it down thus causing the parachute to not work as effectively and your rocket to fall faster. Versus if the cone is able to fall off the rocket, the rocket will fall slower because the parachute does not have as much weight to carry.

5. The less water, the more pressure. We are still unsure of more water or less water is better though. We did not experiment with the water level till the last day, keeping the water level at approximately 1/5 of the bottle. On the last launch day though we did try having more and less water, neither of which had an obvious effect our launch. 

Rocket Fails

All of our rocket launch failures and of course, at the end, our runaway rocket.

Enjoy.

Rocket Fail:)

Today was our last attempt at launching our bottle rocket. To say the least, it was a complete fail. We were supposed to have our rocket in the air for a minimum of 10 seconds, as we have previously done this, we foolishly thought that this would not be a problem. But we found out today that our prior success was probably due to the favorable weather conditions. Today, once again, our rocket failed. The greatest time that our rocket was is in the air was a measly 5.1 seconds, this was far below the expected and desired time. We launched several times, making several adjustments to our rocket each time. We at first just attached the nose cone to our rocket. After that did not work out as planned, we changed our parachute. We made it larger and attached it with strings. This also did not work. We attempted to launch it several more times after this, but each was a complete fail. By the end of the period our rocket was in pieces and it looked like where it ended up, trash. Today's class, though a complete failure scientifically, was hilarious. As you can see from our first video, if we learned anything today, it's that Sam is a complete idiot...he actually believed me when I said the bottle rocket wouldn't launch despite our pumping. Haha, Sam is stupid, laugh with us here:)

Day 4:)

We launched our rocket three times today. Our minimum time requirement was 5 seconds and after a sad failure of 4.30 seconds on the second attempt, our third trial barely made the cut at 5.07 seconds. We made no changes to the rocket itself, keeping the original fins duct taped to the sides, bottle top as a nose cone, and duct tape and plastic grocery bag as a parachute. For both launches, we set the pressure at 70psi, but with an unfavorable wind of 13mph to the Northeast (courtesy of Honolulu ATIS), our record setting 10 second time last class wasn't even close to being met. However, the parachute did deploy effectively both times. Our first launch was a complete failure. Being the idiots that we are, while Sam was still securing the rocket on the launch pad, Brenna got excited and started pumping...thus resulting in a failure launch into Sam's face--unfortunately not caught on camera :( Luckily, we do have a wonderful picture of Sam and his wet shorts for you to laugh at us with:) Hopefully, the next launch will meet the 10 second requirement...pray for good weather:)

Day 3

We launched our 4th rocket trial today on the 3rd day of March 2011. After losing our fins during the 3rd launch a couple days ago, we decided to re-glue and duct tape the fins back on to the bottle. After completing this, today's task was to create and connect a parachute to the rocket. We cut off the top of another bottle and placed it as a cone on our rocket. This kept the parachute packed until it deployed. The cone was not connected to the bottle in any way. We used a plastic bag as a parachute and duct taped part of the bag to the bottle. Space was left for air to enter the chute when deployed. For launching, 60psi of pressure was used as we did in the 2nd and 3rd launch. The initial lift off was a straight vertical line, however due to high winds during the day, the rocket drifted far from the launch point. When reviewing the footage from the launch, the cone flew off and the parachute deployed at 4 seconds. After 10.5 seconds of flight and almost landing on a teacher's car, the rocket landed in tact. Can't wait till launch 5 next week!

Day 2

On our second attempt at launching the bottle rockets no physical modifications were made to the bottle. However something was in fact done differently. We pumped in more air in to the bottle increasing the pressure from 50 psi to 60 psi. This increased pressure caused the bottle to travel a greater height and remain in the air for a longer period of time. This rocket remained in the air for approximately 7-8 seconds. The distance traveled on the x axis (horizontal) was very minimal and most likely due to the wind.

The second rocket we launched today was modified with fins. The fins were cut out of cardboard and protected by duct tape. These were then hot-glued on to the bottle. This was a failed attempt. One fin came off immediately after lift off and the remaining two fins fell off during flight. This bottle only remained in the air for 4-5 seconds. It is possible that the fins were not as fully attached to the bottle as could be, not allowing them to showcase their full potential, but we currently find that no modifications seem to work best for this batch of rockets.