Water Bottle Rocket Final Reflection

Hey so final blogpost today.  Sorry we were unable to write the blogpost sooner because both Marisa and I had Okinawa students.  So we were busy taking them around and talk to them, the entire day (from around 9:30 to 3:30).  Therefore, we couldn't do the post.  Anyways, getting to the point, we had almost the opposite of a good time doing this rocket project.  We had absolutely no materials to work with and we had to spend much time on designing it.  And yesterday didn't help when we launched our rocket, and it landed on the roof of Midkiff.  But in any case, we actually had the best day today with our rocket.  We found the irony in this entire project.  The irony is less is more.  Because we had to make another rocket, we just had to use one bottle, with no wings and whatever materials we had left.  When we shot it the first time, we had to pull it before we did a lot of pumps because the pressure was leaking out.  Anyways, the second time we did it, we pumped it for like 22 times, then we launched it.  At first we thought it was going to fail because it didn't start to open until it actually started falling.  But then, just at the last second, the parachute deployed and the wind took it for a joy ride.  When it landed, it reached a time of 11.28 seconds.  That was totally unbelievable for us.  Anyways, this project from start to end wasn't "hard", it was just frustrating to actually get it finalize it and such.  So Mr. Blake, if you are reading this, can you please, please, please spare our grade, we have a good reason on why we weren't able to turn it in by 3:30.  Onegaishimasu...

This last time, without the fins and the length, our bottle rocket went up, had the cone fall off, and the parachute deploy. Everything worked relatively well seeing as how our cone came off. It didn't veer towards midkiff like it did yesterday. I guess sometimes basic things work better than others fancier, more complicated things. Anyway, the nose cone worked well because it allowed the bottle to go higher and hide the parachute until the time it deployed. If it wasn't there, it would have slowed the rocket down on the way up and decreased flight time because the rocket would not go as high as with no nose cone. I feel pretty successful though. Our flight times through all our launches excluding yesterday's launch made the requirements of minimal time. This was also probably the most fun thing we've done in this class. Basically, all the rockets had the same modifications; the only basic differences were the way people cut them and attached them. As Mr. Blake mentioned in class, it could be the butterfly effect that each addition to the bottle had on everything of the bottle's. Anyway, I'm pretty proud we were able to make the time. This would have made and interesting long term project to reach more than ten seconds though.