Launch Day

What design features were included in your rocket design?
    Our rocket had fins and a parachute with a funnel functioning as a nose cone. The fins were triangular and on the small side, and the parachute was cut from a white trash bag. Instead of using the whole bag intact, we chose to cut it into a circle so it would have greater air resistance and surface area.We put some clay in the nose cone in hopes that it would help the nose cone come off during the rockets descent.

What worked as planned? What did not work as planned?
    During our best launch time, at 16.7 seconds, our parachute finally deployed. It only deployed towards the end of the rockets descent, but it was still more successful than any of our other launches, when the nose cone wouldn’t come off, keeping the parachute from opening up. The fins seemed to be successful though, as our rocket was pretty much stable throughout all the launches. We had been using a small funnel as a nose cone for the past few days, and for about half of our launches today. During one of the rockets launches, the funnel broke upon impact. Luckily we had an extra funnel, that was slightly bigger. It seemed to make it easier for the nose cone to come off and let the parachute expand, giving us more time in the air.

psi at launch - 80
Amount of water in bottle - about half full, slightly under.

The physics learned - We learned (mostly by trial and error) a lot about how much air resistance can affect the rocket. In our case, it worked to our advantage because it was the air resistance that worked with the parachute to keep our rocket in the air for as long as possible. We also learned about how each element of the rocket relates to what kind of flight path it takes. The higher the psi, the more acceleration the rocket had in the air. On some of the rockets that went REALLY high, you could easily see the “fast slow stop slow fast” idea in action. Pretty much all the rockets went high enough that you could see it’s jump in acceleration as it got closer to the ground. I’m super proud of our class since our average was well above 8 at 10.9!