5.4.3.2.1...

  6 SECONDS, THATS ALL! Obviously we did not make it to 10 seconds. However we did manage to past yesterday when it was hard for us to get to 5 seconds. Basically our bottle was made of two different 2 liter bottles. We cut one of them in half and taped the bottom of it to our other bottle. We then added on two fins, these were different than yesterday. They were made out of manila folders and were bigger than our cardboard box ones. We also decided to make smaller fins to go on the top of our rocket. At home Amber had made a new parachute because our other one was to small. She also added a rubber band to make it more schock resistant. Finally we used a cone from when my dad used to coach soccer, it had some holes in it so we were wondering if it would work better or worse than our solid orange cone. We also added a weight onto the top of our nose cone to add some mass. When the cone fell so would the weight so that the rocket would be lighter when the parachute deployed. We did a couple launches and realized that we needed to change some things. For our final rocket we used the original base, the bottle and a half taped together, and our second parachute. However we changed the fins, the weight and nose cone. We took off the two smaller fins and cut the bigger fins because they were so large that it was actually harder for our rocket to get a lot of air. The weight on the nose cone did not seem to be working well so we moved it to the actual rocket. This also didn't seem to be helping so finally we just did not use it. We also decided against the cone with holes in it because the parachute didn't deploy because it would get caught in the holes, so we used the solid orange cone.

Our rocket!

   I think that what really helped us get to 6 seconds was our parachute. Although it did not always deploy at the right time when it did it added lots of seconds to our time. I feel that the reason we didn't get 10 seconds was because we were not able to get our rocket high enough. If it had gone higher the parachute would have deployed and therefore taken longer to come back to the ground. During this activity I learned a lot, not all about physics but a lot anyway. I learned that it is really hard to build a rocket, let alone to build one so that is stays in the air for 10 seconds. I also learned that parachutes are really important, they help your rocket stay in the air for longer and make the landing easier so that your rocket doesn't get busted every time you launch. Some physics related things I learned was that the water acts as fuel and therefore when the water runs out the rocket will stop accelerating. With that said it is important to launch your rocket before your water starts leaking out. Finally I learned that this is a super frustrating lab and some times you cannot always do perfectly.

Amber &I with our rocket and parachute!

Our rocket, parachute and cone!