PHASE 1.0 - Building OverviewPurpose: Now that we've chosen our final motor design for our scratch rockets on the previous section, we will be building our actual scratch made rockets. Unlike the rockets we have made before, we are going to hand make our own bodies, fins, parachutes, nose cones, etc. We will make our own rocket fuel and later we will have launches on our final product. For this phase of the project we are going to be looking for our specific parts to build our rocket. It is our responsibility to find what resources to use in order to build these parts for the rocket. We will be looking at different research sites and methods to find how to make our parts. Group Members: In this project I worked with Sammie and Isabel again. We were required to work with our partners from the Motor Project on section 3. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Beforehand Research: We just made a list of certain materials to use when building rockets, as well as a website to show us how to make parachutes. Materials: Here is our list of materials that we thought we'd use. Some of it has changed. Based on this material list, we used the Second option for nose cone which is balsa wood. List of Parts to make: (ALL SEPARATE POSTS)
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Overview: I really felt like I learned a lot from this work sheet. It helped because we recently did an activity related to the periodic table of elements. I was very confused of how to do the second part of this worksheet at first. I understood the part's of the atoms but after the first page I didn't know how to place the electrons on the atom. After asking Braden he totally enlightened me on how to do it. I was so thankful that he explained it to me, now I understand it really well and it is very good for me to know this for the future. THANK YOU SO MUCH BRADEN! The Periodic Table: Here is the cheat sheet I made of the periodic table of elements. It has different colors showing each "shell" of the elements. To label the configuration I learned that you have to state the Shell Letter which is either S, P, or D, and also how many electrons in the shell. Let's say there is both electrons for the second shell, you would label a exponent 2 for 2P. I learned that on the atom diagram, there are 8 shells and that each of them represent the rows of the periodic table of elements. There is an S side of the periodic table that is on the left. It has Hydrogen and Helium for the first shell (the only exception for S to have electrons from both the left and right of the table), and the rest are going down in pairs of 2. There is a P side of the periodic table on the right, in which Helium is not a part of. It goes in 6' s down for the P. There is also a middle part of the periodic table, it starts on the the 3rd column up until the 12th column. It is the D side of the periodic table. Braden told me that instead of lining up with S and P and starting at 3, it starts at 4D. While S is 3S, D IS 4D. Worksheet: For example: CHLORINE How to get it: The Answer: 1s2, 2s2, 2p6, 3s2, 3p6
Purpose: We did this activity to study more about the earth and what makes up the earth. If we learn more about this we will have a greater understanding of how the Earth has changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Earth science helps us understand the periodic table of elements and about different sources of energy; gas, oil, coal, etc. Which are all very significant to powering our society. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ PROMPT 2: WHAT INFORMATION/CONCEPTS DID YOU HAVE TO KNOW IN ORDER TO INTERPRET WHAT WAS HAPPENING? Research: Silicates: Combination of Silicon (s;) and oxygen (o). 95% of Earths crust, and 97% of earth's mantile is made of silicates. Layers of the Earth: 97% is silicon and oxygen
Na2 Si03 : Sodium Silicate Calcium Silicate Ca Cl2 + Na2 SiO3 --------> NaCl + CaSiO3 Calcium Chloride Sodium Chloride
Materials:
Directions:
PROMPT 3: TELL YOUR STORY, WHAT HAPPENED? What Happened - A Crystal-Rock Story So after the beforehand briefing that Andrew did, we then got into starting to mix the solutions. We first started with Calcium Chloride. He brought over white balls, and slowly dropped it into the small vials. It wasn't until a few minutes when the balls began to sprout into small little branches. This reaction took the longest. After that, we moved onto the next vial. Andrew got out a red substance called cobalt chloride in which they were very small red balls. He dropped them into the second vial, we watched as they immediately reacted and began to sprout up red long lines that went towards the top of the vial. After that, we moved onto the next vial. Andrew got out a light blue substance called copper sulfate. It stood still at the bottom of the vial, nothing happened except for small portions of it floating upwards to the air. When we finished all the reactions, I later realized that the second vial containing cobalt chloride was now turning into a purple/blue. I also noticed that the last vial, the copper sulfate had an usual quality of being able to keep the liquid inside the vial, however way you turn it. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ PROMPT 4: EXPLAIN YOUR OBSERVATION, ASK QUESTIONS What I learned? Noticed? Calcium Chloride - With the calcium chloride we noticed that after awhile, there was branch like crystals forming from the white balls. It grew from the bottom of the vial, creating almost a "forest" of white strings going up the sides. It took the longest time for this reaction to happen, longer than the other two vials. Cobalt Chloride - We first had red beads dropped into the second vile. Immediately, parts of the red beads were shooting up into the top of the vial, they slowly left a trail of red as long strands climbed up the side of the vials. After awhile you notice that the color of these various strands turns from a bright red magenta, to now a purple/blue color. This reaction happened on the spot, immediately when we dropped it in, it started to sprout. It was later when the drastic color change started to happen. Copper Sulfate - According to Andrew, this mixture didn't work with the solution. He put in small beads of light blue and we watched as half of it stayed on the bottom and the other half rose to the top of it. What I did notice was that afterwards, the vial could be turned upside-down and miraculously no liquid would seep out. It was as if the crystal sealed the exit of the water. Nothing really happened besides them floating to the top. When I revisited these vials the next day Here are the three different "Crystal" reaction vials.
Here is what I noticed once I compared:
I also noticed that the next day, the first two vials were cloudy in white while the copper sulfate stayed a clear liquid/ Questions I have:
PROMPT 1: WHY STUDY EARTH SCIENCE/ROCK FORMATIONS? We did this activity to study more about the earth and what makes up the earth. If we learn more about this we will have a greater understanding of how the Earth has changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Earth science helps us understand the periodic table of elements and about different sources of energy; gas, oil, coal, etc. Which are all very significant to powering our society. (From the purpose area up above as well) Everyday we are trying to discover new things, whether it be a cure to a disease, or to discover the new part of under the ocean. Earth Science is helping us have a better understanding of our earth that we are endlessly trying to discover more about. Rock formations are important for us to see the past of our earth. Places like the Grand Canyon are examples of earth's history, nature making these beautiful scenic formations due to erosion and weather. Learning more about these formations and earth in general brings us closer to understanding what happened on our earth before. PHASE 2: Motor TestsPurpose: To test our motors in our groups. We will see how much thrust our certain paring gives. We will be shooting each motor by lighting it up with a match. Group Members: In this project my project members were Isabel and Sammie. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Making the Motor: To create our motor, Andrew simply asked for our combination of size, burner, and fuel. We wrote it down on one of the cardboard motors, and Andrew got them and created each motor over the week. Beforehand thoughts: I wasn't sure how our pairing would go. I was confident in the End Burner/Black Powder combination, for I thought we would get a lot of thrust from that. But I wasn't so sure about our size of 3/16s. We chose to go smaller than everyone else, we were not sure how that will work, whether it will be an advantage or not. I hoped that our motor would work efficiently and that we would get a large amount of thrust. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What Happened? - A motor story! Instead of only a portion of groups going, we decided that everyone in the class would be going. Along with Brian's 9th graders who were doing a similar project on rocket motors as well. Each group was required to write a paper with all the information; fuel type, burner, size, name , etc. The paper would be put in front of the go pro before filming. We walked down to the bay, and by random, Andrew and Brian picked out motors and called the groups to test them. We were then called up to go. We are excited to see how the motor would perform. And as we stepped back to watch it, we sadly watched it puff out a cloud of smoke. When we pressed the button, Andrew said that the match wasn't working well. We tried multiple times, about 3 or 4 times. The match wasn't being cooperative! Frustrated, we let another group go instead of us. Andrew and Brian told us that we would go later in the day. We came back after lunch, maybe 4th or 5th period. It was us, and another group from our class, along with Brian's freshman. We walked back to the bay, back to the center of the field. My group members and I waited until it was our turn again. After awhile, the wind was growing stronger, and the air grew colder. We finally were able to test the motor. This time, IT WAS A SUCCESS! We were unsure of how much thrust it gave at the time, but then we just watched as it was performing successfully. Happy with ourselves, we all cheered gladly at out working motor. It didn't have such a powerful sound when it was being tested like the other groups, but it still emitted the shot of power on the end like it was supposed to. We noticed that it was starting to drizzle. Sammie and I requested to go back, and as we were walking it began to pour. It was raining extremely hard, and we had to stop all motor tests. Sammie and I ran back to school with the rain pouring down heavily on all of us. This is the video taken on the GoPro Andrew had. Motor Thrust Curve: Based on this video, we took it and slowed it down on a video program, looking frame by frame to see what the thrust was for each frame increment. After doing a large spreadsheet on google spreadsheet, we then transferred our data into a table chart. It was a line graph that showed the amount of thrust per 1/30th of a second.
To do this we: We put this on a video editing program, and slowed it down. Frame by frame we referred to the thrust for each 1/30th of a second. Our video itself was 8 seconds long, but our thrust began shooting up from 0 at exactly 2 second in. So technically we had a 6 second long video. If we have 1/30th of a second entries, then this means that we have 30 entries per 1 second. Since we have 6 seconds in total, our whole entry total would be around 180 entries. (in our case we had more, it was a little over 6 seconds.) On our spreadsheet, our group worked together to have one person say the different thrust numbers while everybody else fills it into the spreadsheet. We got 187 entries in total. AFTERTHOUGHTS Motor Test Results: Sadly our motor didn't do as well as we thought it would. I had good expectations for it, but sadly compared to everyone else, our thrust was significantly low. I think the reason for that is because of our motor core size of 3/16. The highest our thrust went was 364. Which is not high at all compared to thousands that other groups reached with their rocket. I noticed that everyone else had chosen sizes like 1/4th rather than ours which was 3/16. With our graph as you can see, the thrust doesn't shoot up right away like a normal rocket would. It is only gradually, only after a few moments where it shoots to the highest thrust point. Compared to everyone's graphs, our was the only one that gradually went up and gradually went down. Everyone else's shot up and shot down, a huge spike in the data. The huge spike in the graph means that there was a powerful shoot of thrust happening in the beginning of the launch, then once it reached it's peak it shoots down as well. But with ours, the gradual rising up to the highest point meant that we did not have a strong start. It didn't shoot powerfully into the sky like every other rocket would. It started off small and gradually worked its way up to the peaking point. Which is not what we're looking for if we want a high rocket launch. Other groups used the same gun powder and the end burner combination. I have yet to find out exactly. Questions I had/Researched?
What I enjoyed? I enjoyed watching our motor work finally. The success of being able to see your product work, just like the previous rocket project. The experience was definitely different because we didn't actually build the motor ourselves. We had Andrew make them all, so we didn't really experience the whole process. I feel that I would have enjoyed it more if I felt the whole process of building the motor. What could've been done better? Differently?
Group Work: I feel that I contributed to the group well on this project. We all equally did research beforehand, and I also took the opportunity to draw out our motor and nozzle diagram. We all documented equally and we all helped with the graphing and data plotting of the motor thrust curves. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Thrust Results: Our thrust results were not the lowest nor were the highest. Here were our results:
OUR FINAL DECISION: We will not be using our original motor design, we chose to use Autrina's motor design instead. Why did you choose not to? We thought ours did work, but did not work most efficiently. We got a good amount of thrust, but based on our graph, we didn't like the thrust curve ended up like. For our rocket we kinda want to do one that has an immediate shoot up in thrust that then goes down quickly, rather than what we have that shoots up and gradually goes to the peak of the thrust then slows down. It is not that our motor was unsuccessful, it was more on the fact that we want a stronger launch for our rocket. Why did you pick the new motor design? We picked Autrina's groups design because we saw a lot of things that we wanted for our rocket. They had a more significant amount of thrust than us, amounting to 43054, and on their graph the peak point was around 2000 g's of thrust in around 4 seconds. The time it took to reach the highest thrust was almost half the time we had, and in their graph it displayed a immediate shoot into the peak thrust. We were looking for this to happen with our motor. We will try to use their design for our future rocket. Hopefully it will be successful. Here is their design: Fuel Type: Black Powder Core Size: 3/16" Nozzle Size: 1/4" PHASE 1: Research and Picking Motor TypePurpose: This section's main project was the rocket motor project. In which we get in groups of 2-3 to create a working rocket motor. We are testing out different types of fuels and burners, and each group chooses a little different combination of them. We are creating motors and later we will test the thrust. We will see which motor type is the most efficient for our final project: Scratch Rockets. We will compare the different outcomes of each group and we will see which combination of burner and fuel brought us the most thrust. Group Members: On this project I worked with Isabel and Sammie. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Beforehand Research: We were required to choose a fuel and a motor engine. To pick something most efficient, we were required to do research on each of the options. Motor choice - END BURNER or CORE BURNER Fuel choice - BLACK POWDER or SUGAR CHOOSING THE RIGHT BURNER/FUEL/SIZE COMBINATION: Initially, the combination our group had in mind was Core Burner and Black Powder. Before conducting much research, we all thought of doing that combination. We thought that core burner was the more practical decision, and we thought that we wanted more of a higher shot of thrust instead of the end burner giving us just a constant level of thrust. Along with the core burner, we chose to do gun powder. After doing more research we saw that since the distance that the flame travels is short in a core burner (from the edge of the core to the inside of the casing wall), core burners have short burn times. Knowing that gun powder has a faster burning time than sugar, we realized then that we couldn't do a gun powder and core burner combination. After talking to Andrew we also later realized that our motor would blow up if we combined those two options. We chose to keep black powder because we wanted a faster burn rather than a long burn that sugar gives us. And so, instead of choosing core burner, we chose to do end burner. Regarding the size of 3/16ths, we chose to do a smaller motor than what everyone else was doing. Why core burner and gun powder are not suggested to work together? I learned that core burners have a smaller nozzle, and so fast burning fuel like black (gun) powder will not work well with that. So much energy will be released from the fast burning black powder, and that isn't good for a burner with a small exit way (nozzle) such as the core burner. All the energy at once cannot exit the motor fast enough, and so the motor is very vulnerable of exploding. So much energy will be released and will not exit fast enough, all the energy contained will just blow up the core burner. That is why we switched from core burner to end burner. We then drew our diagrams for our choices. PLEASE IGNORE THE CORE BURNER LABEL. After this we got our brown cardboard motor and got a name plate to write our group name and important information on it. Here is our FINAL INFORMATION:
Next post we will continue work on this project! We will be testing these motors out soon! Today in class, Andrew gave us an opportunity to get points. He did an activity on Chemical Reactions, which later became a class wide assignment. Purpose: Discovering more about chemical reactions and the periodic table of elements, also making H20 with Combustion Group Members: Griffin, Israel, Juan ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Beforehand Lesson: Andrew briefed us on chemical reactions and the periodic table before conducting the actual experiment in our groups. What is a chemical reaction?
What is a combustion reaction?
Thermodynamics of Chemical Reactions
Periodic Table of Elements:
Materials:
Directions:
What happened? A Chemical Reaction Story So I did this project assignment with Griffin, Israel and Juan. After we acquired our necessary materials. We filled up the beaker with water and began to mix in the citric acid. Of course nothing happened, but then Andrew passed around the coil of magnesium. He demonstrated how to coil the long strands and then Griffin followed and coiled it for us. We dropped it in. Slowly it appeared as if it were boiling in the beaker. The liquid itself was bubbling and when we all tried placing our hands on it, we felt that the beaker itself was gradually getting warmer. After awhile we noticed a strong scent in the air. We realized it was from the magnesium in the citric acid. We cringed at the burning scent for it was not exactly a pleasant one. Andrew then passed out the black balloons. We put over the balloon onto the beaker. We waited for the balloon to slowly fill up with the hydrogen exerting from the chemical reaction between the magnesium and the citric acid. Slowly the balloon filled up, not as big as a standard sized party balloon, but to about a circumference of 3 1/2 inches. When we said the balloon was filled up, Andrew tied it off and let us play with the balloon. The balloon was floating on its own and if we weren't careful, it would fly up towards the ceiling like another person's did. By the time we were done playing with it, we went to go light up the balloon to see the combustion reaction happen. One by one we waited in line to light up our table's balloons. When it was our turn, Israel tied the balloon to a long beam that he would later place next to the fire to make it explode. Andrew turned of the lights and with a match, lit up a birthday candle on the table. Israel slowly dropped our balloon onto the match, and at the very second it made contact with the fire, there was a mini explosion. THE COMBUSTION REACTION was a success. There was hydrogen in the balloon due to the chemical reaction between magnesium and the water/citric acid. And we filled up the balloon with the hydrogen energy. Then we lit up the balloon so it could exert the energy out into a small scale explosion. The energy radiating from the match was the enough amount of energy (aka the activation energy) to initiate the chemical reaction. What I learned? Noticed?
Afterthoughts: I thought the whole experiment went well. At first I couldn't understand the examples he was givingon the periodic table of elements. But afterwards I understood it. The actual things we learned were really helpful, I learned a lot about periodic table which will be very helpful for the future. I thought that surprisingly our balloon filled up the most. It was the biggest balloon, why is that though? I thought overall we did well, nothing could have really gone wrong. It was cool seeing the balloon float on its own. It's hard to explain how everything works in general but it's slowly becoming easier to understand after doing more research and more worksheets on it. It was cool seeing the explosion happen due to the combustion reaction. It kind of made me think about how much more of an explosion we could make if we made a reaction on a much greater scale. What would you do differently? I would probably have time lapsed the burning sensation of the magnesium to the citric acid. I would have documented a lot more, regarding the notes we took on the research beforehand and also the whole experiment as a whole. Next time I want to document more and I want to not procrastinate when it comes to blogging. Purpose:
Group Members:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Beforehand Research: Bismuth: A chemical element with symbol Bi and atomic number 83. Bismuth, a pentavalent post-transition metal, chemically resembles arsenic and antimony. It's appearance is a brittle redish-gray material Bismuth is a metallic chemical element that is classified among the group of elements colloquially known as “poor elements” in the periodic table. This element has a number of uses, making it common in industrial applications. Many consumers own products which contain bismuth, although they may not necessarily interact with the element directly. Melting Process
Important things to keep in mind:
Coloring Process:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Safety Precautions: Safety:
Before Lab Thoughts: I saw other people doing this bismuth lab and I was very curious to see what the outcome would be. I saw people getting different colors of their bismuth every time. Our group decided on a specific color we wanted. We wanted the color blue. This time we worked with a new person, Natalie. She had background knowledge on bismuth and showed a lot of eagerness to do the lab. It was cool working with a new person and it was useful that she already knew how to do it. I was looking forward to seeing how it would turn out. I was a bit afraid of being burnt. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Materials:
Directions:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What Happened? A bismuth Story Our group finally got the heat plate! Sadly there are no other heat plates besides one. We had reserved the hot plate for the period. We used the leftover bismuth from the group before us. It took some time because the bismuth was stuck to the sides of the first small measuring cup we used and the hot plate heated up the bottom. We first began by heating up the hot plate at 530 degrees like we were told to do. It took awhile before it heated up all the way. We were then given our piece of bismuth. We were required to cut it up into smaller pieces so they could fit into our small pots that we were to heat on the plate. We placed the chunks of bismuth into the pots. It took awhile before the bismuth actually melted. It was difficult to stop people from knocking the table. We were supposed to keep the surface as still as possible. But since people always crossed our path to go to talk to Andrew, they'd bump into the table a lot and our bismuth would move a lot. That was probably because of our choice of area. Maybe we should've sat somewhere that was a less frequent path for people. After a few minutes our bismuth was actually melted. We had to shake the container and watch for ripples in the liquid bismuth to check and see that it has all melted. The gray and yellow stuff that was described in our research, or the slag was there starting to appear. We quickly got a scraper to scrape and scoop it out into a mug. One of my group members was the one that attended to the bismuth now and continuously. They continuously scraped off the slag and kept the melted bismuth clean. Wearing mitts we poured our bismuth into the second larger container at this point. We were at the point where we could use the coloring process. Since the majority of my group members wanted blue, we did neutral to little oxygen exposure. To get oxygen exposure, we tapped the table and shook the bismuth. We then took it off the hotplate to let it cool. We scraped off the slag again, and later we found out that we didn't scrape it off enough. At this point, we poured the excess liquid into the 1st smaller cup again. We then saw that there were bluish crystals left behind. We were left with these crystals. We were all very excited and amazed by our work. We then hit the top of the cup onto the table. Getting our bismuth pieces out. I noticed that the bottom area and sides that touched the cup stayed gray like its original form. It had not been exposed to oxygen so that's why it stayed like that. We each took our own individual bismuth pieces! (____________________________________________________________________________________________________
What I learned/noticed?
Questions I had/researched?
Bismuth has a rhombohedral crystal structure, so it will form angular crystals. It forms those elaborate hopper crystals because the edges of the crystal structure are more energetically favorable positions than the interior and faces. That makes the molecules continue to form crystal edges but never fill in the centers when crystallizing out of solution.
Since these waves are in very close proximity they will interfere with one another; creating a new wavelength (or even cancelling one another out). This depends on how much the two waves are offset from one another, which depends on the thickness of the film. As the thickness increases so does the distance of the reflected waves, until the colours fade off into grey noise. (Interesting note; thin-film interference is also responsible for the dazzling colors in a bubble and the rainbows in an oil-spill) What could've been better? Differently? I overall think we did a good job, its just that we left over slag on our bismuth as it was being crystallized. It most likely affected the appearance and quality of our crystals, maybe it could've been a bolder shade of blue all through out with a consistency, and maybe we would have more "Staircase" pieces, rather than areas of the end product that we couldn't use. We could've done this lab with a smaller amount of people. There were 4 of us and I believe that the lab didn't require more than two people to do it together. I feel that if we were in smaller groups we would've has more to contribute and would all be more engaged, rather than one or two people doing most of the things. If I were to do this again, I would plan on making actual jewelry that we can sell to the public. I feel that bismuth necklaces would be a very unique type of necklace and surely people would think and consider investing in them. I would want to do more research on what kind of chains or jewel holders could we have used to attach our rocks to. What I enjoyed? I enjoyed working with more people even if it wasn't necessary. It was my first time working with Natalie and I can say that she was very knowledgeable about bismuth and she really took the initiative to teach us and helps us learn how to make it. I am thankful for the extra help she gave us. I was happy with outcome. For the most part we followed the rules and I feel like our bismuth turned out just fine. We did our best and the pieces we had received from this experiment are definitely jewelry worthy! Group Work: I helped document things and helped melt the bismuth. I honestly think that our group should have been two groups since bismuth isn't really required to have 4 people. I feel that we learned a lot and that we finished the assignment successfully. We could have been more careful and patient, but overall our outcome was good. Purpose: To experiment on Sodium Polyacrylate and to try to expand the mass of it by adding water, creating "Fake Snow". Group Members: In this project I worked with Sammie. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Background Research: Sodium Polyacry is?
Pre-Lab/Safety Precautions: Potential Health Hazards
Materials:
Directions:
What happened? A fake snow story... Sammie and I decided to work together on this project again. We first put on safety glasses, then Braden corrected us and made us wear masks. Embarrassed, we pulled the masks on tight and began our work. We got one diaper, and like we were told, we opened up the diaper to acquire our sodium polyacrylate. We then began to extract the cotton, as you can see on the bottom right, we teared off the cotton, leaving the sodium polyacrylate to be extracted into our beaker. Then we got our sodium polyacrylate and scraped it into the beaker. It took awhile to get a good amount of the dust. We had to basically tear our diaper apart to get all we could. It was often scattered around the diaper. We poured a good amount of it into our beaker, we knew that we didn't need sooo much since the sodium polycrylate itself expands much more than in its current state. After getting a small amount of sodium polycrylate in our beaker, we then poured it into a bowl to start mixing it with H20. It slowly absorbed it when we began mixing it with our fingers. They popped up like little ball sponges. This time lapse shows our mixing process. Already we saw a big difference in the sodium polycrylate. It started off just barely filling up a layer of dust in our foam bowl. And already, after adding water, it filled up the whole bowl. We first got a consistency like the one below. A "snow" like consistency. Where it is more of the solid state of matter. We then thought about what to do next. Sammie suggested that we add more water. I filled up a small beaker with water and threw it in with the "snow" like sodium polyacrylate. We wanted to just add in little by little, but later, after adding 400 ml of water, we had to move our snow to a much larger container. It began to leak and overflow out of the bowl, and so we got a large glass container. So at this point, the consistency is very "slushy" like. It appears like icy water. And at this point the state it is in is more of the liquid side, it can't hold a certain shape or volume. Like the water, the temperature of the actual sodium polyacrylate was cold. We finished our experiment at this point.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________ What I learned/noticed?
Questions I had/researched?
If I could do it differently?
PHASE 2 of Model Rocket - Launching StageThis is a continuation post of my first Model Rocket post. This includes the reflection of the whole entire experience, the questions I have, final outcome, etc. Purpose:
Group Members:
What happened? Another Rocket story, Near-death experience It is October 14th, 2015. And today is the day. The day where we set off our little rocket into the sky! I was very excited for this day, yet at the same time I was afraid of our little rocket failing miserably. I was confident in what we made but I still kept in mind that our rocket wasn't going to work 100% hands down for sure. Sadly Kazuha has left us, leaving Sammie and I as the only ones to fulfill the deed of letting our rocket go. Both Sammie and I had permission slips to go to fiesta island. So we both decided to go. Beforehand, we had to add the motor into it and all the last minute adjustments. We added the:
The photo below is our rocket before launching, in its final state. We then headed over to Fiesta Island with 5 other groups. After 10 minutes of driving, we arrived on the island. We walked to a clear area, dirt surrounding us. We set up our rocket launch pad right in the middle-ish of the dirt field. It was mixture of sand/dirt, so it made it hard to walk in. We volunteered as the first group to launch our rocket. I was honestly nervous to see what would happen. Both Sammie and I wanted to film the rocket being set up into the sky, so we let Braden launch our rocket himself. Now was the moment! It was history about to be made. We nervously watched as our baby was being lit up and shot into the sky. We stood back about 20 ft away as the rocket shot straight into the air. I couldn't catch the rocket as it flew into the sky very well with my phone, I realized how quickly it shot up there. In a matter of miliseconds, our rocket was already out of sight. I couldn't chase it with my eyes, for the white object seemed to fade into nothingness. My video wasn't very good for it lost the rocket at one point. Andrew had yelled during the video saying "It's parachutes out!" Sammie and I yelled with joy as our rocket was quickly being pulled by the wind into the far away hills of the island. It went so far, maybe even 100 ft or more away! I was blown away by how well our little rocket performed. Sammie and I ran towards it as we saw that it was slowly falling and landing. We ran in the dirt/sand, struggling to move quickly for the dirt got into our shoes and socks. We ran after Adarius and Skye who had just ran over to fetch it. We arrived at the hills, confused of where it could've landed. Skye and Adarius came and told us that it was around 10ft away from the water. Sammie and I jumped for joy, for that implied that it didn't just go far, it went REALLY far! Almost to the whole other area of Fiesta Island. I was proud of our rocket, and I was also proud of us as well as Kazuha who sadly couldn't be here to witness our work come to life today. We happily brought our not so damaged but kind of damp rocket back to the launching site. IT WAS A SUCCESS! Extra Story: All the other groups went. (We were the only girls there). And Adarius decided that he'll launch their scratch rocket. We all anticipated, Sammie and I finally making it back from the other side where our rocket landed. We all stood back. The rocket finally was launched and we laughed at how it zoomed in loops into the sky. It then turned at one point and faced our groups direction. It was like a missile was going to hit my face. It faced all of us and we panicked. Sammie and I jumped to the right as the rocket landed and made a crater into the group where Andrew and Braden were standing before it hit. We all laughed about it afterwards, saying that we can say that we almost got killed by a rocket :) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What I learned/noticed?
Questions I had:
Afterthoughts: I regret underestimating our rocket and our work itself. I feel that we did a fair job at creating our rocket, and I shouldn't have discredited our work by simply saying "I feel like ours won't work...". I was totally proven wrong after our rocket was launched. It was one of the better rockets there today and I believe that it was the one that went farthest from launching site. The reason I doubted our rocket was because I checked it the day before and saw that our fins were completely off centered, they weren't perpendicular with each other. I thought that it would greatly affect the performance of our rocket. But to my surprise, the rocket worked very efficiently, and our uneven and sloppy fins didn't take away from it and it's performance in any way. I really enjoyed the build up from creating our rocket to finally seeing it being shot into the air. I am very much looking forward to seeing more launches and to building another rocket! This was just our first rocket, and it was a model rocket. I am interested to see how a scratch rocket would work and how we will build it and such. I hope I can continue to work with Sammie for I believe that we are a good team together. We got everything good on time, and although our rocket wasn't exactly perfect, look wise and such, it performed the best of its abilities, and MADE US PROUD! If I could do it differently: If I were to do this again, I would probably attend to the rocket better, I would probably check if it was straight and check if everything was fine before pushing through with it. I'm not sure if adjusting or fixing the crooked fins would make a difference, but I believe that it was sort of careless for me to just let it dry that way and to not do anything about it. I would also want to put a camera into the payload! I'm so angry I forgot about that. I was looking forward to it yesterday, seeing our rocket shoot into the sky in both our people point of view and the view of the rocket. I am not sure if it would've damaged that camera or what but I want to try to do that at some point. I really want to see a view of the sky from the rocket! I would also want to mark the distances of the rocket from launch site to landing point. I want to see which rockets went further, and to compare and contrast, possibly finding out what makes the rocket go highest or furthest. What I enjoyed? I honestly enjoyed the majority of the process that it took to make the rocket. I feel that it was a smart choice to do this in this section and I am very glad to be able to say that "I BUILT A ROCKET!" and that it actually worked efficiently. It was interesting seeing how the rocket comes all together. I didn't know whether or not the kit would be easy to follow, but after building it, I realized that it was a great way of getting amateurs like my group and I to build a very efficient rocket. People like us knew nothing about rockets and now we made one that worked well! I am very glad that I did this and I look forward to learning more about rockets and making more rockets. The best part was watching our little star covered "S.S.Bae Bray" fly into the sky. And being astonished at how high it went, to the point where we lost it with our eyes. We couldn't find it at first but we luckily saw where it landed. I am proud of the work my partners and I did. I sent the rocket video to Kazuha who is currently not with us, and she said it was amazing. The three of us did great work together. I am satisfied with our work done! Hooray! Group Work: I thought that my partnership with Sammie and Kazuha was great. We were a good group and I believe that we carried all of our responsibilities out well. We never had to put a pause to building rockets because one of the group members had unfinished business. We worked to get all our priorities done and we all moved ahead together. We each contributed, did our part. And it is thanks to all three of us that we made this successful rocket. I am happy to have been with these people. I look forward to working with Sammie again. And I hope that kazuha will see the rocket video I did a Unit 2 worksheet on Dimensional Analysis, the questions along with answers/work is written below. Unit 2:1 Dimensional Analysis - Take Home Quiz Questions
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December 2015
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