The Bottle Rocket

In the past week our class split apart and worked in separate groups to create what we thought the best bottle rocket could be. Many excruciating hours were spent planning and drawing up blueprints for the potential gold medal rocket. The first few hours were spent debating on which bottle to use. Once the perfect bottle was found blueprints were drawn up. The next day was work day, upon the arrival into class we soon discovered that our bottle had been stollen, so the searching process began again. Once the rocket was complete the material to help it fly needed to be added. Once complete we all took our rockets outside to be tested, the objective of this experiment was to see whose rocket, once launched, would go the farthest. The launch sequence is simple, fill the bottle with five hundred milliliters of water, then close the cap hole off using a plug with an air tub running through it. Once this has been fitted the rocket is then tightly placed between two parallel pieces of metal. Then what looks like a massive paper clip is placed just above the the plug to prevent the rocket from dragging the tube with it upon take off. Once the rocket is in place a student will use a bike pump which is connected to the tube running into the rocket, to pump eighty-five pounds per square inch of air pressure into the rocket. Once this is complete a student will then pull the pin releasing the rocket into the air. Now due to the pent up air inside of the rocket, upon all being let out at once it causes the rocket to push aggressively against the backboard, thus sending into the air. Once in flight all of the unbalanced forces started to take affect. No balanced forces were involved in this flight. The unbalanced forces that were causing the rocket to slow were, the air, and later the ground. Had the ground not been there it would have continuously gone forever until another unbalanced force stopped it. The most significant force was the air, pushing with just as much force against the rocket as the rocket to the air. This having to do with Newtons third law, stating that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So upon take off the rocket pushed on the board and it pushed back, the same goes for the air, it pushed back, thus causing the rocket to go a shorter distance than a rocket that was more aerodynamic. Improvements that could have been made for the rocket must have been that it wasn't aerodynamic enough. One of the worst design flaws must have been the flat horizontal cardboard fins. These were by far what were ultimately our rockets down fall. So Rowan can be blamed for this because the weird fins were his idea. Improvements for the future would be to make a more aerodynamic rocket that would have less resistance in flight. In conclusion our rocket was fairly unsuccessful. We tried our hardest but what we came up with just wasn't good enough.