Cover Letter: For our rocket project, we learned how to calculate angles using SOH CAH TOA and learned lessons on how to calculate velocity, position and acceleration while also learning how to identify that in our own rocket. Our objective was to make a successful rocket, using the materials provided to us at school, that launched very high up while also having a parachute deploy. Another goal for us was to beat Ande and Madi's rocket. We first looked at designs on a linked website and chose a few that looked the most appealing. We then built our first rocket which had one fin and launched it 2-3 times before it broke. After our failed attempt, we attached three right angled triangle fins onto our rocket. With this new design, we had a successful launch of 200 ft, ranking our rocket in 4th place.
Blueprint:
Calculations:
Time of Max Height To find the time of the max height, we used our video of the rocket during its launch and flight. With the help of Illyria, she helped us estimate our frames, due to my video going black when downloaded. When doing our calculations, we found that our time of max height was 0.91 seconds. Max Height When finding our max height, we had to first find the angle of our rocket which was 47 degrees. We then used SOH CAH TOA and applied the angles known into the equation. Using TOA, our equation was y=200tan(47), and when plugged into a calculator, our final answer was 214.47
Initial Velocity To find the initial velocity, we used the max height and the time of the max height to solve. We then plugged our numbers into the formula provided on the calculations worksheet. Our initial velocity was 248.58 ft/s
Theoretical Flight Time Our last step was to find the theoretical flight time which was used by using the standard form of the quadratic and the formula for height given at any time. After plugging in our numbers into both equations, we found that our theoretical flight time was 25 seconds.
Reflection:
During this project we encountered multiple challenges, we did indeed fix them. One of the challenges we faced was that one of our group members (Max), did not help with a single thing during the building process. We did have three group members, which helped a lot, especially when designing. Another challenge we faced was on our last test launch our fin came off and we had to completely re-design. Unfortunately for Bella, I was not there that day, so she mostly did that. We kind of went into the final launching not knowing what our rocket was going to do, I thought it went really well. We faced one last challenge while launching at the final launch, we had this really great idea to put glitter in the parachute when launching, so I put a lot in there. Not think this would affect anything, the glitter actually weighed down the parachute after it deployed. This was not a big deal because we had already launched and our parachute deployed, but it was just annoying.
Our rocket was successful at the launch. As I said before after we changed our fins we didn’t test launch before the final launch so it was kind of a hit or miss. I am really glad we changed our fins because before we did, our rocket was only going like 70 feet in the air, at the final launch our rocket went 200 feet. We got 5th place which was really nice because our parachute deployed. So some successes were that our parachute deployed, our rocket went pretty high, we got 5th place, and Bella and I worked really well together. I am not sure how what we did good will relay to the sophmores next year, but I bet they won’t be able to beat the new record.
A turning point for me in this project was when my group was working on the poster. We had some issues with a certain group member not putting any work into the poster or the project in general and that made me really frustrated. After trying to have a conversation with him about it, he decided to go off and make his own poster, but not only was he really rude and disrespectful, he took Bella and I’s work off of our canva that we made without him. This was a turning point because I had a fine mindset towards him in our group before and now I am so angry at him for taking our work.
One really big lesson I learned is that Max and I do not work well together and I will not be working with him in the future. However, Bella and I worked really well together and I would be happy to work with her again. An obvious lesson I learned from this project was how to build and launch a bottle rocket, I doubt I will ever do this again, but it was still a really fun project. I really struggled to understand the velocity and everything we did before building the rockets, and i think it was cool that we learned all that, but I found it to be completely useless. I think doing that for one week at most would be the most efficient and then starting on the rockets earlier. If I were to do this project again, I would not work with Max, and I would do the second design that we did. Another thing I would do differently is I would not put glitter in the parachute, it was a really fun idea, but it ended up just screwing us over. I would also put the PSI to at least 90 or 100 because I think we could have gotten our rocket a lot higher than it went if we would have put it higher. I would do these things differently because they make a lot more sense and they make the process more efficient.