october sky: write up
My first rocket was more of an experimental rocket since I really didn’t know much about creating a good rocket. But building rocket one helped me to build rocket two, and overall both have helped with rocket three. I’ve learned that making sure there’s no holes is important. My 2nd rocket was part of the few successful ones, and that’s because there was no way for the air to be released. I never experienced a very big moment of failure, though my first rocket’s egg did not break, whereas my second rocket’s did. So, from that I learned that the more secure (in the way that the egg is unable to move) is helpful. I put the paper towels & scraps of paper in a cone with the egg and put tape over the top so the egg can’t go anywhere and I’d like to do that again for my 3rd rocket.
For my final launch, I took the first idea of wrapping the egg in tape and paper towel, and did the same for rocket three’s egg. We launched twice, and the first time the rocket flew up approximately 60 feet, and landed 46 feet away from the launching station. But, because of my height, and how far away I was measuring from the launching station, that was incorrect. By using a tangent equation, my group and I found out the exact height; 79.674 feet. The egg broke during the launch, and the nose cone was smashed, so the second time around I didn’t think it would go as high. It surprised me though, and ending up doing 283.564 feet. By adding and dividing to find the average, we found out that the rocket would go 181.619 as the average.
At the end of the project, we held an exhibition to present all the work we did!