Bottle Rocket analysis - quarter 3

What design features worked?
           The size of the fins and how we wrapped duct tape around them seemed to work fine. A few time the rocket landed on a fin and it came off, because the fins were only attached to the bottle by hot glue, but after we duct taped the glued fins to the bottle the fins never came off. The bottle itself never broke apart. Our first nose cone was very good because of the thick paper we used. However, it got stuck in the tree and we were unable to retreive it. We didn't have any more of that paper so we had to use a thinner construction paper. We wrapped the cone in the duct tape too, but it was still flismy, and crushed easily. The only design that didn't work was the parachute. For some reason, we couldn't get it to come out of the cone. Although we tried folding it and placing it inside the cone various different ways, it was never effective.

Launch condition - amount of H2o PSI?
         When we launched it twice in the morning (8ish), there was no wind. We used a lot of water (about 1 L) and realized that it had too much water and it was weighing it down, which constrained it from reaching a higher height. We then tried a little less water (about 3 party cups full of water) and it worked a lot better. We tried to get as much PSI or pound/square inch as we could. We ended up with about 100 or 120 PSI, the highest PSI we could get.

What this taught you about physics and otherwise.
           I learned that there are always variable you don't know about, or don't realize that exist. It's very hard to manipulate your experiment when you are outside. I also learned that expirements are very hard to reproduce, and very hard to predict the outcome - the outcome is different every time!
           Otherwise, I learned that maybe there is such thing as fate, and whatever that's meant to be will happen! I also realized how frustrating it is when something doesn't go the way you planned it and you know why but can't make it change (like with the parachute). Lastly, NEVER GIVE UP! You never know what might happen!

Our highest time in the air: 9.1 sec. Overall, I am very proud of our rocket. We got the second highest time in the class.