Rocket Science

Doing actual (water bottle) rocket science was pretty exciting. Not only did Candace, Matt and I get the record for longest launch at 11.87 seconds, we're also feeling confident about our times for tomorrow. Our average launch time was about 8 seconds, and we've gotten our launch system all figured out. After our first launch, the parachute didn't deploy at all. The nose cone didn't even come off the rocket. We had used some clay in the nose cone as extra mass, so for the second launch we took out some of the clay to see if it would make a different. Second launch time had about a second of improvement from the first one, but the parachute still didn't deploy until we were just above the ground. To see if we could make our third launch time any better we increased the length of our strings attached to the parachute. With that adjustment, we made it to 11.87 seconds and the parachute deployed. We were originally planning on using this rocket as a test rocket, and recreating it with all the best aspects again tomorrow morning, but now we're afraid to jinx our luck so we'll keep the rocket for the launches tomorrow as well.