Week 4, Day 2: It IS Rocket Science

We started the day learning a little about the forces that make a rocket go up (thrust from the engine) and those that resist it going up (friction from the air and gravity). We discussed how these influence how high a rocket will go. For many toy rockets (like the ones we built later) all of the thrust is right at the beginning and the rocket slows down over time.

We watched a few videos of rocket and space shuttle launches:

Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch - Nov 16, 2009

Atlas V rocket launch - May 22, 2014

Delta II rocket launch - July 2, 2014

The third video sparked a discussion of why we did not hear the voices of any women in the countdown. We also noticed in the space shuttle video that unlike toy rockets, the space shuttle kept going faster and faster after launch - they identified a couple of reasons for this - continued thrust from the engines as well as less air resistance as the space shuttle got higher - great thinking!



We then built paper stomp rockets, assembled the launchers, and tried them out. They were a hit, and could actually go quite high. The instructions for building the rockets are here:


Paper Stomp Rocket Instructions

I did make a modification to this to increase durability by having them make a ring of scotch tape around the PVC pipe with sticky side out - so that when they wrap their paper rocket into a tub the tape is on the inside bottom end (sticking out a little bit). This can then be folded over the outside of the tube. This protects the end of the rocket that goes over the launcher. At the end of the day some of the kids made stomp jets as well. Instructions for these are here:

Stomp Jet Instructions

Here they are with their completed rockets

 

And here is the first launch

After lunch we went to the field next to Ledyard Middle School to launch Estes Solid Fuel Model Rockets. We first explained some safety rules and showed them how the rockets work.

Then it was time for launch

 

And then everyone would run to retrieve the rockets at they came down

 

 

I think everyone had a great time with rocket science.