When we were first introduced to this project, a lot of people were really excited to get started on working on the model of their water bottle rockets. We used different websites to help us in the design of our rockets. We sort of used the following link, http://tclauset.org/21_BtlRockets/BTL.html to help begin our design. We didn’t really follow exactly what it showed. We ended up using only one 2L bottle for our rocket instead of lengthening it using two bottles. When we did our first launch with no modifications of any kind, our rocket stayed in the air for 5.5 seconds. For that launch, we used 500 mL of water for our fuel and used a PSI of 60. We were quite satisfied with our first launch. For our second launch, we just added a nose cone to our bottle. We also used 500 mL of water and kept the PSI at 60. Our rocket stayed in the air for exactly 6 seconds. For our third launch we need to use a parachute. We created our parachute from a GLAD trash bag. We cut the corner of the trash bag and used the straps of the trash bag to connect the trash bag to the bottle. We put our parachute over our nose cone. We weren’t completely sure how to effectively place the parachute beneath the nose cone and make it deploy. We thought that if the parachute was over the nose cone, the rocket would still have the same flight going up and on its way down the parachute would catch air and hold the rocket in the air longer. Our launch only lasted just past 3 seconds. The parachute didn’t work. For our next launch we thought that we should add fins to better balance the rocket. The fins and the nose cone worked well for us because on the last day to launch we reached 7.7 seconds. The pressure and amount of water also helped a lot. We used 800 mL of water and a PSI of 80. If we were to use less water and less PSI, the rocket most likely wouldn’t have gone so high and wouldn’t have stayed in the air that long.
Overall, this project was good for everyone. If you were very attentive and paid attention to detail and design, you most likely got a decent if not perfect grade on your rocket. Even if you didn’t get a good grade, you were able to get hands on experience and learning about how water bottle rockets work and how to make it more effective. This project also taught us to be more responsible for our work. If we individually didn’t get our work done, like our blogs, then we would most likely not end up with the grade we want. This project encouraged us to stay on top of our studies and be more focused on what we were supposed to do. I thoroughly liked this project. It was enjoyably entertaining and very beneficial educationally.
