Day 20: Water Bottle Rockets Day 2

Rocket Man Women!!

Aleina, my water bottle rocket lab partner, and I built the body of our water bottle rocket from two 2 Liter bottles. We used duct tape to take the outside of one of the bottles to keep the plastic sturdy and we cut up the other one before taping it to the first bottle. The second bottle is where we stored a roll of duct tape, a bag of Goldfish snacks, and a number of quarters to add mass and balance the amount of weight we towards the end of our bottle rocket. We attached a parachute (which was made of a plastic bag, duct tape and string) to the second rocket so when the rocket reaches its peak in height, air resistance will help to keep it in the air longer as it falls back down. The nose cone stores the parachute and was made of a sports drilling cone. The nose cone ensures that as the cone is in the air, the parachute won't come out until it starts to fall. There is play doh to help increase the amount of mass on the end of the bottle rocket to even out amount of mass on both sides. We also attached fins to our rocket to ensure the rocket will be steady.


Our attempt for day 2 wasn't too bad! After every launch, my partner and I tweaked it a bit. Surprisingly, our tweaking actually increased the amount of time every time! We reached our 5 second goal with 5.1 seconds, which might not be a long time for other groups, but gave us hope to continue modifying our project and to trust in Physics!