Final Blog Post

During the course of this bottle rocket project, we've experienced many ups and downs. The first day of launching was a day of testing variables such as psi and fuel. That day, we tried 40 psi because that was the given value and the most psi that my body possibly pump into the rocket. Regarding the fuel, we discovered that 500 mL was not the prime amount of water, but that a value greater than that, 700 mL was better. That day, our best launch time was 4.5 seconds and our worst was 4 seconds. The 2nd day of launching, we made some modifications to our rocket. We added a nose cone, by simply taping the cone to the top of our rocket. We also added thin fins. This day was a day of realization. We realized that our nose cone was too heavy because with our nose cone, it lasted 3.7 seconds with 700 mL and 3.1 with 800 mL. Then we removed the nose cone and the rocket stayed in the air for 4.8 seconds with 700 mL. For all launches we used 40 psi. That day we realized that our nose cone needed to be lighter and that we needed stronger fins. For our 3rd launch, it was required that we have a parachute. On this day, we added a parachute that was made of a long plastic trash bag. We also added stronger fins and cut our nose cone so that it was lighter. On this day, our worst launch was 4.2 seconds with 840mL.  Our best launch for the day lasted 5.9 seconds with only 500mL. All the launches that day were released with 40psi. For the first launches with the parachute we did not use the orange nose cone because of technical problems and our parachute was made of a trash bag and a lightweight hemp string. This was an experiment day. We experimented with our first rocket with a parachute, after the day was over we decided that we needed to improve on the parachute so that it would stay airborne longer. We used a different trash bag and to opt on on the nose cone. Launch day 4 was the first day adverse conditions. It made us a little nervous because we weren't sure how our rocket would work in this weather. The wind definitely played a huge role this day. We only needed to launch once because we made the 5 second requirement. The official recorded time was 10.2 seconds! We were on track.... not for long. Thursday the 8th was the final launch day and the minimum time was 10 seconds. Unfortunately, our rocket lasted a mere 4.0 seconds in the air. We launched multiple times but there no success. Our rocket shot up twice but three of the five attempts did not. We believe it was technical and human error. The rocket design had issues because our parachute did not deploy, the fuel also leaked and the strings connecting the rocket and parachute had detached on multiple occasions. It was sad and disappointing day because the previous surpassed passed our goal time for the project, yet on the day it really mattered it did not work out as planned.

Video Reaction: See video for our reactions to this project