PHASE 2.0 - ROCKET LAUNCHPurpose: LAUNCHING OUR ROCKET.. FINALLY! Group Members: Sammie and Isabel! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What Happened? - ROCKET LAUNCH STORY Wednesday was when were supposed to launch but instead we had to go on Monday of the next week. All the groups that hadn't gone went with us. We just went with Braden and he drove the two groups to the island. When we got there, it was extremely cold and windy. We let the other group go first. When we got the other group to go, their rocket flied in a sort of curve towards the water. They chased after it and saw that it went into the water. Because of this, Braden suggested that we move more into the island, to prevent our rocket from zooming into the water. We moved and we finally went to launch our rocket! We had a really hard time starting it up at first, the fuze was not lighting. We also had to repair our launch lug for it was very loose on our rocket. Isabel had to go and run to get super glue, sadly she got super glue all over her hands in the process. But finally, we were able to get our rocket to launch. YES!!!!!! IT WORKED!!!!!! I was so happy to see our rocket launch. I was actually surprised at how straight and how far it went. I even lost it in the camera view. I was really proud of the work we did, even the crooked fins we had still worked, as well as the oddly shaped nose cone.
What had happened after the launch was that our rocket zoomed back to the ground. The parachute didn't deploy! It ended up landing nose cone first into the ground, breaking some of our fins in the process. Our rocket wasn't totally ruined, just the fins were crushed in half as well as a dented rocket body. We found that our parachute didn't deploy, for it was stuck crumpled up in our rocket body. (Along with some tape accidentally sticking to it that was supposed to be used to fit in our nose cone to our rocket body well.) Things you Learned? Observed?:
Group Members: Isabel and Sammie were the best group members I could have asked for. They are not only my close friends but are great people to work with. Each of us pushed through with work and we all were able to contribute very equally to the project. All of us knew everything that was going on in our rocket, and not once have I felt like one of us or two were doing more work than the other. I was glad to have been in a group with just girls. I feel like building rockets and so much of the process of it like drilling, sawing, etc, are all things that people would not think of girls being able to push through with. A lot of people asked when we would do things "Do you need help?" but we'd always reply with no we can handle this. And we did! It feels really good to have been able to do harsh physical tasks without help from anyone else. We were able to do a lot of actions that are normally abnormal for a girl to do. Afterthoughts: Even though there were technical difficulties, I was really happy and quite satisfied with how the whole event went. I was afraid of our rocket not working but instead it worked far better than I thought it would. The whole project itself, I just feel really thankful to have been able to have an opportunity to do something like this. Most 15 year old kids can't say "I've built my own working rocket from scratch, with homemade fuel, materials, everything. It went hundreds of feet into the air." This is an experience that I will never forget. I have enjoyed learning about rockets and seeing the whole process it takes to actually build one. Just in general, most people give me a strange look when I tell them that I built a rocket. They say like oh so it was out of a kit from your teacher right? And I respond with no, it was something we built from scratch
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December 2015
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