Rocket Eggmision

Q Focus:

1.)  Will more water in the rocket make the rocket launch farther?

In our rockets, we used 900 ml of water.  The result was that one of our rockets got the farthest distance.

2.)  Does the angle affect the distance?

Yes it does.  In our practice launches, we launched at 45 degrees. This resulted in a distance of less than 30 meters.  At 43 degrees, we were able to reach 90 meters.

3.)  What will let the egg survive?

Based on the launches, most of the eggs died.  It seemed that it was luck if eggs survived.

Making of the Rocket

Materials:

• 2, 2-L bottles 
• Duct tape 
• aluminum foil tape 
• hair spray 
• cardboard 
• scissors 
• folder

To build our rockets, we began with cutting one bottle in half and using it as a nose cone. I used a piece of cardboard from the bottom of a water bottle case and began to cut it into 4 fins. I wrapped each fin in aluminum foil which helped add more weight to the rocket as well as making the fins sturdier. I attached the fins to the bottle by first spraying some hair spray on it to make it sticky and then wrapping it with duct tape. We used felt and cotton balls to try to keep the egg safe. We thought that something soft would keep the egg from breaking.

Physics of the Rocket

When building a rocket, you have to think about many different factors. The amount of water, how much it weighs, the position of the fins and even the direction in which it is pointed. Every aspect makes a difference when launching your rocket, Too much weight will make it uneven and cause it too spin or flip, The fins being slightly tilted could cause it to rotate when flying through the air and not enough water with too much compressed air could cause it not to go far enough. The cotton balls would make the egg have more of an impact time which will then lessen the amount of force acting upon the egg.

http://www.ohio.edu/mechanical/programming/rocket/analysis1.html

What I Learned:

I learned that weight distribution plays a big part on the rocket launch.  If the bottom is too heavy, it will spiral out of control.  If the top is too heavy, it will go up and go straight down.  However, if the balance point is about a third from the top, it will keep the rocket straight and shoot farther.

Conclusion

For our rockets, we used 900 ml of water and pumped it to 80 psi.  We launched it at an angle of 43 degrees.  Our rocket reached 90 meters, the farthest in our class.  In the end, our egg did not survive.  I think that our design was very good.  However, we could have used more material to keep the egg from breaking. 

Dynamic PBM Final

Kobe did not actually jump over the car because he has admitted that it was fake.  Also, the video looks very fake anyways.

Dynamic PBM

I think the small ball bounces high because the bigger ball will bump it up which causes it to go up.

Free Falling!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6SrwUwVZ5Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ8RLpbgy8E

The first link is of a video that explains free fall.  The second link is to a video of skydiving.  It is very cool cuz people are skydiving in Aruba.  These are better than others because it explains free-fall clearly and another one is very entertaining.  If I were to make a video, I would go somewhere and take a video of me skydiving.

Spaghetti Towers

On this spaghetti tower, we use a total of 30 spaghetti sticks and 16 marshmallows. The amount spent was $460.

Our tower came out to a height of 87 centimeters.  This past the assignment of 80 centimeters.

 

Our design is based upon rectangles with triangle cross sections. Originally, we had planned on building a triangular prism. However, the model did not support itself and kept on falling over and breaking. We switched to the square base and this was able to support the rest of the structure much better. There wasn't anything that I didn't like about our tower. Our biggest challenge was probably when the tower kept on falling and wouldn't hold itself. We overcame this by redesigning the tower and adding more triangles to keep it sturdy. If we had the opportunity to redesign the tower, I wouldn't change anything. This is because our tower was able to stand and pass the minimum height requirement.

I personally liked this project because I like physics. I didn't really want to give up because I like building stuff. It fascinates me how a thin spaghetti noodle and marshmallows can become such a tower like this. As I looked around the room, there were many towers that was similar to ours. We all had the same basic idea. If we could add another material to the mix, it would be duct tape. Why wouldn't I want to add duct tape. Duct tape would help it stand so much easier. Also, you could wrap the spaghetti in duct tape so it will have more strength. My contribution to the group was designing and building the tower.