On Thursday the fourth 6C ran the water rocket experiment. 6C have recently been studying about space and space travel. There were four groups of four and five. I was in a group with Yong Wan, Iruka, Keigo, and myself.
The purpose of the experiment was to find out which designs and features made the rockets fly higher up and fly steady. We had to come up with different designs and choose as a group which features we would use on the rocket. We had three PET bottles (One bottle had to remain intact as it had to be the body), Tape, One A3 size sheet of card paper, and one A4 size sheet of hard, brittle, and thick styrofoam/foam thing.
I thought that the rocket that had the best nose (nice cone, to make it aerodynamic) and the best fins (sturdy aerodynamic fins) would fly the highest.
To make our rocket, we first chose a PET bottle that would become our body/engine. Then we would make fins and stick them on to our engine. After that we would make a nose that would be aerodynamic and looks good.
In the end our rocket didnt launch at all because of a leak of some kind. So we got to make another rocket but had no time to put the nose or the fins on so it was just the body/engine. It was light so it flew up the highest but flew unstable. To be fair group ones rocket was the best as it flew up second highest (but had the fins and nose on) and flew up straight and stable. I learnt that the rockets that had the best features would fly up the highet.
May 21st, 2011 at 6:58 PM
Neil,
Good job of discussing your ‘failure’ in a scientific and insightful way. Sounds like you leaned a lot from this project. I would have liked to read more about how you think your rocket would have flown compared to the others if it didn’t have a leak. How did the data compare? Any errors in how we launched our rockets or measured their altitudes?