Rockets. The epitome of every childhood dream a kid could have. Flying, creating, brainstorming. All different associations relating to rockets. Well, for Jeffery Dobbek, Kiernan Hardiman, and me (Felipe Luna), we got a hands on experience which allowed us to create a fairly simple, but unfortunately ineffective rocket in design.
I. To begin, I'll begin with the materials. These consisted of:
- 2 2-Liter soda bottles (about $1.25 each)
- 2 rolls of duct tape (app. $6 each)
- Paper (donated by Mr. Yav and brought from home--Free)
- a roll of string (No more than $3)
- A funnel ($1)
- A paper cup (100 for $3)
- A trash bag (Provided from the cafeteria--Free)
- Cardboard fins cut from a box (Free)
- Hot glue (Free)
- Latex gloves (Free)
- Total: $18.53 (approx. value; $0.03 for one cup)
II. Next comes the procedure of building the rocket itself:
- Gather all materials necessary
- Cut off enough of one bottle so that it is about 6 inches from the opening
- Construct a cone with way too much duct tape
- Clumsily attach fins to the side of the bottle with an unordinary amount of duct tape
- Lift the bottle
- Get criticized by Kiernan
- Start over
- Keep separated bottle parts
- Attach funnel to top of separated with less duct tape, but enough to keep it firmly secured
- Tape over the funnel and form it into a cone shape
- Obtain a plastic trash bag
- Measure and cut a 20" x 20" square out
- Tape 1 piece of 24" string to each corner and tape all pieces of string together at the end
- Hot glue 3 cardboard fins to the side of the bottle (Reinforce with duct tape)
- Hot glue cup to the inside of the "cone" of the rocket-- this will serve as the holding place for the egg
- Place egg inside cup, duct tape cpp shut, and tape parachute end to cup.
- Attach top to bottom part of rocket
- Fill with water
- Pump to 70 Psi
- Blast off
III. Upon launching the rocket, its fins unfortunately detached mid-launch, hampering its maximum potential, leaving Kiernan, Jefferey and I all scratching our heads wondering what we could have fixed. The rocket did not come close to exceeding expectations and we stood quite dumbfounded at the sight of our invention crashing to the ground, crushing the egg. The day was a sunny, cloudless, albeit slightly windy day, but not enough wind to have a large presence over the outcome of the launch. The biggest factors contributing to the fate of the rocket proved to be human error and
IV. After further evaluation we realized that we could have fastened the wings so they would not have fallen off. Another problem we were faced with was the fact that the rocket did not detach from its base, completely obliterating the poor egg. The end result to that was not very pretty from a fowl's perspective. Compared to other classmates' rockets, ours needed a lot of room for improvement. We should have found a way to ensure that our rocket would detach, and in the event that it did, the parachute would safely deploy and ease the cone side to the ground, leaving the egg unharmed. Obviously the wings detaching served as another area for improvement, and we could have maybe made the rocket somewhat lighter and better looking.
Countdown...
In my opinion, the teacher's guesstimate was a more accurate representation of what the height of the rocket was, due to a possible miscalculation of the given time.
No comments:
Post a Comment