Launch Day 1 Blog (Root Beer Bottle)

Today, on Monday, February 28th 2011, my group and I launched our first water bottle rocket. The launch came with little success. Our first model consisted of just an empty two liter bottle (which previously contained Root Beer, our real testing bottle will have previously been a Mountain Dew bottle, thus the name "mountainallstar" for our site) with a full cup of water inside of it. The water acted as fuel for the rocket. I predict that the more water that is used for fuel, the higher the bottle will launch, up to a certain point, when the water level becomes an inconvenience rather than an advantage. I predict that this limit may be about 2 cups. For our next launch, I will try to add a little more water than 1 cup and see if it affects the height of the bottle during its launch. Our first launch did not take off of the ground at all. We experienced many problems with our apparatus when trying to pump the bottle up. When we finally decided to switch apparatuses, we knew that we had to launch the rocket for what little pressure it contained. Matthew, one of our group members, made the mistake of pulling on the string which held the rocket in place too slowly. As a result, the rocket tipped toward Matthew and shot into his shin. Therefore, the first launch was a failure. My group and I now know that the string needs to be pulled quickly in order for it to launch successfully. Our next model will contain fins and a cone so that it looks more like a rocket.