Bottle Rocket FAIL (aka Launch Numbah Uno.)

Just ten minutes ago, we launched our very first bottle rocket. However, we failed miserably the first time... couldn't even get any air! We enlisted the help of Mistah Blake and Physics— the pressure we pumped into the bottle (didn't know the actual pressure due to the air pump's lack of a gauge) was apparently not enough to "pop" our bottle into the sky. So Mistah Blake pumped even more pressure (measured in psi, or pressure per square inch) into our bottle, and even though the string was no longer attached, the bottle still launched semi-successfully. We say "semi-successful" because it launched and launched HIGH, but it went towards our class... it didn't ram into anyone, though. We think this happened because of the angle that our bottle was on after being slightly tugged by the string, causing the center of pressure (the point on an object where the sum of total pressure acts) to be slightly off and therefore move our bottle's motion towards our classmates, not the sky. :( Actually, the whole launching of the bottle rocket is pure science. Newton's Third Law can be used to explain this process— it states that the force of one object acting on another object is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the force of the second object acting upon the first. So when we launched successfully, the pressure of the rocket countered the mass of the water, and accelerating the rocket to account for the mass being lost at a rapid rate. Anyway, hope this is an accurate account of our happenings here in period 4. See you again on Thursday~

#kthanksbai

Keana and Nikki

Sharing the sources... and an awesome movie...

FIRST POST for a NEW BLOG! Say goodbye to um hi, i'm in physics, because I will probably never post on it again. And now it's time for a new adventure... something along the lines of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). Haven't seen it? Well, you should. It's got a not-so-sad Keanu Reeves in it. Anyway, this first post is about the sources I have found so far. Luckily, I found two very comprehensive and concise (what do these people do for fun?) websites that will hopefully make my life easier as Keana and I struggle to "build a better bottle rocket."

The first website is http://www.waterrocketmanual.com/how_they_work.htm, which basically gives you everything you'd ever need to build a water bottle rocket. In a way, the information can be inundating— there is so much information that you don't need, but might be worth a visit anyway. The second website is http://www.aircommandrockets.com/construction.htm, which is very step by step and has lots of good pictures for reference.
Hopefully these two sites help us out... we'll see.

#kthanksbai