Progress Day #4

As my progression goes on, today was a testing day for my rocket. Day 1 out of 2 were complete. With the help from my dad, we went to a football field with yard measurements to give it a few test tries before we actually get the results from the experiment. I wanted to make sure everything was proper and ready to go. I took a picture when it launched and it looks like this:

This picture was taken as soon as the rocket had launched. It was hard to take and I thought that this picture looked really good. I remember as a class, we made bottle rockets and added material to make the bottle and nose cone strong and sturdy so it wouldn't collapse easily or fly a short distance. it was fun and a good experience to see how the rockets did with little time to prepare them. I tried to keep a 45 degree angle launch zone and it was pretty accurate. The first table that I set up had multiple trials (5). I started it from 0 ml of water to see how far it would go. I increased the ml of water by 200 ml each time and stopped at 800 ml of water. I also massed the rocket each time as well. My final results will be displayed on the good copy. As we tried the rocket each time, I also measure the distance it travelled and made my first graph. With one graph being ml of water on the x-axis, and height (m) on the y-axis, the other graph I could make involves distance (m) and time (s). As I stated before in my previous blogs, I can calculate the velocity by taking the distance and time the rocket has travelled. I am also thinking of making another graph which includes the calculated speed of a standard rocket as a function of time.

This diagram shows a simple understanding of how the rocket looks like with the labelled parts and clearly represents each part of the rocket.

From the information I have obtained so far (still collecting more data), I can use this and the derived kinematic equations we learned in the acceleration unit (CAPM - Constant Acceleration Particle Model) to figure out the unknown of either distance, acceleration, velocity 1, velocity 2. Tomorrow, will be the second test day, and I will test anything I have missed (yet to do) or wanting to do over again. In terms of my ISU, I am more than halfway finishing. I've been working on my other sections too. I have finished my introduction, materials, and closely done my procedure. The experiment was great and enjoying as well. The bottle rocket isn't only about how high it goes or how awesome and cool it is, but it's the physics that's behind the scenes of this experiment.