Ricky Pearce Rocket Project 2

Ricky Pearce Rocket Project

Ricky Pearce

Group members: 

-Kyle Macauley

-Devon Buenrestro 

Procedure:

1. Cut out four fins from the shoe box, make them all similar in length and width. (3 inches wide by 6 inches long) 

2. Duct tape the fins to the body of the rocket. Tape them about 3 inches from the opening. Nake the spacing even and tape them until secure. 

3. Once the fins are secure, cut the top and bottom off of one of the 2 liter bottles. On the top, cut 4 inches below the opening, on the bottom cut at the lowest point possible.

4. Take the middle piece that you cut out and tape it to the top of other bottle. Securely tape it to the side opposite of the opening of the bottle. 

5. Use the pieces of the top and the bottom of the bottle to create a capsule for the egg. Tape those two pieces together.

6. To make a nose cone, cut out 3 pieces of cardboard and form them on the top of the capsule. Securely tape it.

 

7. Strip the umbrella of the sheet, discard everything but the fabric. This will make the parachute.

8. Evenly poke 8 holes in the corners of the fabric and tie strings to these holes. Length of string=diameter of umbrella. 

9. Tape the loose ends of the string together to form the parachute then tape the parachute to the capsule.

10. Put foam or any extremely soft content inside the capsule and tape it shut. 

11. Tightly fold the parachute (neatly and evenly for the best parachute deployment) in an accordion style. Wrap the string around the parachute and place the parachute in the empty container that is attached to the body of the rocket.

12. Loosely place the capsule on the top of the rocket so it is able to deploy. 

13. Place egg in the capsule. 

14. Launch the rocket

Results:

Our rocket launch yielded very good results. After launching 80 feet in the air with a total air time of 3.38 seconds, our egg capsule and parachute deployed (unlike most other groups) and floated to the ground with an un-cracked egg inside. Overall, I think that our rocket performed the best in our class with the 3rd highest peak and a perfect parachute deployment. I think that the weight of the capsule+parachute contributed to the perfect deployment because it allowed the capsule to seperate from the rocket at the peak of its launch height before being caught in the rocket's downward force and crashing into the ground (what happened to most people's rockets). One thing that hindered our rocket to have the tallest launch height is the lack of aerodynamics of the fins on the rocket. They were kind of bent and uneven, leading to greater air resistance which results in a lower launch height. 

Conclusion:

I would not change anything about our rocket besides the aerodynamics of the rocket. I think that by making the fins a little thinner, straighter, and more even, it could greatly increase the maximum launch height achieved by our rocket by reducing the amount of air resistance that the rocket would have to encounter. Also, it would help if we made the nose of the rocket more aerodynamic by making it pointy instead of rounded, for the same reason of avoiding air resistance. Besides that nothing really needs to be changed. The weather was perfect, our rocket was average size, the parachute worked perfectly, and our egg was kept safe. 

Calculations:

-Height of Apogee

The height given by the teacher is 80 m which I think is definitely more accurate than the calculated height of 111.959 m due to the fact that this equation negates both air resistance and the mass of the rocket (which were both present in the actual rocket launch). There is a 31 meter difference between the given height and the calculated height, so the difference between air resistance and no air resistance is about 31 m.

-Initial Velocity

FBD

(a) 

(b).