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AMES
Hendricks
Honors Physics
B3
Abstract
Launching rockets to calculate how high the Rocket goes with different types of engines.
There were many steps in order to calculate the height of the rocket, using different skills that
had been learned throughout the year and applying them to an event in the real world. The
predicted heights and the actual heights were off from each other by a huge difference.
Introduction
The project was done in order to apply the physics that was learned in a classroom setting
to an event that happens in real life. The different components that needed to be done in order to
calculated the height of the rocket, was the gathering of the data from the engine thrust analysis,
calculating of the drag force for the rocket, prediction of the flight using numerical iteration, and
then calculating the actual flight results. In order to perform the experiment there is some
background information that needs to be known.
Definitions that should be known are:
Kinematics: the study of motion.
Dynamics: the study of how forces produce motion
Impulse: (the force multiplied by the time that the two objects were in contact
for. ( )
Momentum: ( is the mass of the object multiplied by the velocity of that
object.
( )
Drag force: (

the air resistance on the object, drag force is proportional to the

velocity of the object squared

Drag coefficient: (

the constant needed to make the drag force equal to the

velocity instead of proportional, once the drag coefficient is known for an object
then it does not change. (

Other important information is the derivation of the impulse momentum equation. The
steps in deriving this equation are as follows:
Start with the Impulse equation.

Use Newtons second law

Substitute into the impulse equation for

Use the definition of acceleration (

) and substitute it in for

Since =

, means that if the clock starts when ( ), it can be written as

At this point the will cancel out leaving just

When is multiplied to the equation is

Since momentum is the mass multiplied by the velocity the equation can be written as
this

Because then the equation can be simplified to

Then the final equation is

The impulse/momentum equation
The impulse is used to tell what type of a rocket engine it is, all rockets are classified the
same way. Each classification of an engine has a letter, a number then a dash followed by
another number. The letter tells how much impulse an engine can give. An A engine gives
2.5 NS, a B engine gives off 5 NS, every time the letter goes up the impulse is doubled. The
number next to the letter tells the average force of the engine. The number after the dash tells the
delay time from when the engine runs out of fuel to when the parachute will be deployed. An
example is A8-3, meaning that the impulse of the rocket is 2.5 NS, the average force of the
rocket is 8N and the delay time is 3 Sec. Knowing the impulse and the average force is the
information needed to calculate the burn time of the rocket.
In a rocket engine there are two places for rocket fuel. The first part is the initial fuel
which is fast burning, then there is a slow burning plug, and then the final part is another fast
burning fuel to eject the parachute to enable it to slow the rocket down.




Engine thrust analysis
In order to get the thrust vs. time data a digital force gauge was used to measure the force
of a rocket engine over a period of time. The gauge was strapped to a long track with a strap of
duct tape to hold in in place, the rocket engine was then placed behind the gauge on the same
track. The reason behind the experiment was to get data to make an impulse over time graph, so
that the impulse of a rocket engine could be calculated and the type of rocket engine would be
known. Another reason was to find out the exact amount of thrust a rocket engine puts out at
each tenth of a second in order to use the data to predict how high the rocket will go with that
type of engine later.
The gauge measured the force of the engine, showing that the pushing force was in the
negative direction. A program was used to collect the data from the gauge and store it on the
calculator. The name of the program used was Easy Data; the first thing that needed to be done
was to zero the gauge. After that the gauge was then set to record every 1/10 of a second and to
store 100 samples of, which is 10 seconds of data. So that the data was more exact the triggering
function was set to start recording the data. When the force was at -1 then the triggering would
start, and it was set to store 10% of the data before the trigger.
The setup of the experiment was outside, a battery was connected to electrical wires
through big alligator clamps at the other end of the electrical wire there was two small alligator
clamps connected to an igniter, at the end of the igniter is a phosphorous tip which is what
ignites the rocket engine. The electricity created by the batteries heated up the wire and the
igniter then lights the highly unstable phosphorous.












From the data a graph was then drawn, to find the impulse, the area
under the curve was calculated. The engine type used in the experiment was a
B4 engine, meaning that the impulse of the rocket engine is 5Ns; in this case it
was 4Ns so it was rounded up, and the average force is 4N.

*The graphs for the different types of engines, and the table of data
Time Force
0 0
.1 0
.2 0
.3 -.40
.4 -5.02
.5 -10.14
.6 -5.24
.7 -3.82
.8 -3.55
.9 -3.90
1.0 -3.94
1.1 -3.99
1.2 -1.42
1.3 0
Because the graph was oddly shaped there was no easy way to tell what the area under
the curve was to solve this problem, left endpoint and right endpoints rectangles were used. For
the left endpoint rectangle the area calculated was 4.0. When calculating the right endpoint
rectangles the area was also found to by 4.0. The total impulse of the rockets is 4Ns that rounds
up to 5Ns which is a B engine. In order to find the average force the area under of the graph has
to be 4N to find the area of a rectangle is the Base*Height. The base of the graph was 10 seconds
so the height has to be 4N, meaning that the average force has to be 4N. That means that the
rocket engine is a B4 engine.
Drag Force Analysis (Air Resistance)
In order to measure the drag coefficients there needs to be an equation to do that with.
Through experiments, Physicist found that the drag force on a moving object is proportional to
the square of the velocity of that object. This is written as

, in order to write this with an

equal sign there needs to be a constant in the equation. With the constant the equation is now
written as

. The value of the constant depends on the size and shape of the object that
is moving, it is known as the Drag coefficient. It is easy to calculate the drag force of any
object at any velocity, if the drag coefficient is known. The nice thing about the drag coefficient
is that it is constant for that object. Meaning it never changes even when the velocity changes.
The only way to determine the drag coefficient of an object, if it is unknown, is
experimentally. To experimentally calculate the drag coefficient, the object is placed in a wind
tunnel. The force that acts upon the object is measured; the rate at which the wind is rushing past
is a known velocity. Then there are calculations that need to be done to determine the value of
the drag coefficient.
In this experiment the drag coefficient of a rocket was what needed to be found. In order
to do this there are two steps; starting with the first step which is to calculate the force of the
wind in the tunnel. The rocket was placed inside of a wind tunnel and the angle that the rocket
was pushed by the wind was measured. The mass needs to be calculated or known. An equation
needed to be derived in order to calculate the force of the wind. To derive this equation,
Newtons second law and trigonometry were used. The initial step is to do a free body diagram
of the rocket in the wind tunnel with all the forces acting upon it.
Tsin
Tcos T
Wind

mg

There are three forces, mg, T, and

. The tension force needs to be broken up into its

horizontal and vertical components. Which are and
Newtons second law is now used ( ), and with that there will be two equations;
one for the horizontal direction

, and one for the vertical direction

.
Substitute

into the first equation for T, to solve for the drag force. The final equation for the
first step is

.
The next task of this experiment is to calculate the drag coefficient. A wind speed gauge
is used to measure the velocity of the wind inside of the tunnel. The force of the wind pushing
the rocket sideways and the wind speed. The equation

will be used to calculate the drag

coefficient.
in order to get all the measurements needed a wind tunnel was used.
The way that the
wind tunnel works is on one
side there is a fan blowing
air out of the tunnel and
because of that the other
side of the tunnel air gets
sucked into it. The wind
blown into the wind tunnel
pushes a rocket back, inside
the wind tunnel there is a protractor to measure .
There are honey comb grates on either side of the chamber where the rocket is placed. The
purposes of these grates are to
reduce turbulence that might be
produced from the movement of air.
The value of the angle measured in the wind tunnel was
There was a protractor inside of the wind tunnel to measure the angle. Because it wasnt
that exact it could be off by 2.
The mass of the rocket was found to be 61g, when converted to kg it is .061kg.
This was on the side of the rocked since there was no way to get the rocket out of the
wind tunnel.
The wind speed was measured to be 15

. The wind speed gauge was not in the class

room so the wind speed will not be that exact either.
With these numbers the drag force and the drag coefficient were calculated.
The drag force was calculated and found to be .30459N
The drag coefficient of the rocket was calculated, using the equations that were derived
above, and was found to be .00135

. Its not really out to three sig figs because the

above calculations were not that exact.
Numerical Model of the predicted Flight
In order to predict the highest point at which the rocket will fly a spread sheet was used to
create a numerical model. The type of rocket engine, the mass of rocket with the engine, and the
drag coefficient must be known in order to predict the height that the rocket would fly. A sample
spread sheet is provided of one of the predictions.
There are eleven columns in the spread sheet that were used to predict the final height of
the rocket. The first column is time, in intervals of one tenth of a second. For the numerical
model to be accurate there was data that needed to be calculated. This data was gathered through
the Engine Thrust Analysis experiment. The data gathered from three different engines, an A8,
B6, and C6, were grafted and then mapped out on a data table. These numbers were then copied
and pasted onto the spread sheet in the thrust column, which is the second column.
The third column is the average thrust. The way this was calculated is by adding the
thrust from the first data point, to the thrust from the second data point, then dividing the sum of
the thrusts by two. The equation for this is, (

)/2. The fourth column is to calculate

the drag force; in order to do this the prior

is used. The equation used to calculate the drag

force is (

). Calculating the Average net force is what the fifth column is for, the
equation used to calculate it is (

). The sixth column is the average net

impulse, the equation used is (

). The initial velocity is the last rows (

); this is found in
the seventh column. Final velocity is found in the eighth column and is calculated by the
equation (

). The average velocity in the ninth column is calculated by adding v

initial to v final and dividing the sum of it by two, in mathematical terms it would look like
(

)/2. The column for final height is the tenth column and the column that is where the
predicted height will be found. The equation used to calculate this is (

). The final
column is the final time, which is every one tenth of a second.
Using the spread sheet six maximum heights was predicted. The information for two
different rockets was used and the data from the three different engines was used as well.
Rocket A8 B6 C6
Red/Silver 17m 31m 63m
Red/Black 14m 26m 55m
Without air resistance then the rocket would be able to go much higher because there
would be no opposing forces on the rocket. The difference with and without air resistance is
without air resistance is hundreds of meters. The max height without air resistance was about 466
meters, and the height with air resistance was 63 meters. How this was calculated it was on the
spread sheet the mass of the red/silver rocket was put in the place for the mass but the drag
coefficient was kept at zero. Then after the max height was found a drag coefficient of .004 was
then added to the spread sheet and the max height with air resistance was calculated. With air
resistance it opposes the object which causes it to slow down much faster than it would without
the air resistance; causing the rocket to not fly as high.
Average
Thrust
Drag
Force
Average
Net
Force
Average
Net
Impulse

Average
Velocity
Initial
Height
Final
Height
0.00 0.02 -0.90 -0.09 2.50 1.49 1.99 63.17 63.37
0.00 0.01 -0.88 -0.09 1.49 0.50 0.99 63.37 63.47
0.00 0.00 -0.87 -0.09 0.50 -0.48 0.01 63.47 63.47
0.00 0.00 -0.87 -0.09 -0.48 -1.46 -0.97 63.47 63.37

Flight Results
In order to test the predictions that were made, the Rockets were launched. The only way
to measure the height without using an altitude meter is to have a person with a protractor a
certain distance away and to collect the angle of the rocket. Once that is known, and the height of
the person is known then there is enough information to calculate the height of the rocket. There
is a problem with that method though. Rockets rarely will fly straight up; the curve of the rocket
will cause the one person to either get a measurement of the angle that is too big, or too small. In
order to fix the problem of the rocket curving, three people took measurements of the rocket.
Each person with a protractor stood 50m away from the launch pad of the rocket, in three
different directions. The three measures for the, angles where then averaged, the average angle of
that rocket was then used as theta and the height was calculated. The protractors that were used
had a string tied on to it, and a washer was tied to the other end of the string to weigh the string
down. A triangle was used to calculate the height of the rocket. The equation used to calculate
the height of the rocket was . An example of this is calculating the height of the small
white rocket with a diagram.





In the equation, d is the distance of where the angle was measured from the launch pad,
is the average angle that the rocket made to the ground; h is the final calculated height of the
rocket. Once the height of the rocket is known the height of the person needs to be added to the
answer to get the final answer, because the equation is only taking into account the height of the
triangle not the added height of the person, the average height was about 1.7m. In the experiment
five different rockets were launched, one of the rockets was launched a second time with a
different engine.
Rocket Engine
1
st

Angle
2
nd

Angle
3
rd

Angle
Average
Angle
Drag
coefficient
Predicted
Height
Final
Height
Small
White
A 25 2. .001 23m 30m
Red/Silver C6 5 .
.002 92m
452m .003 74m
.004 64m
Black/Red C6
.003 72m
159m
.004 62m
Big White C6 5 5 5 .003 73m 188m
Red/Yellow
B6 5 . .002 50m 169m
C6 .002 97m 477m

*Angles above 90 were not used in averaging the angles because it would mess up the
data too much.
Conclusion
As seen in the table the heights are off by hundreds of meters. The reason this is, is
because when the rocket curved during flight. The distance from the people measuring the angles
and the actual rocket was no longer 50 m. Another reason why the predictions were off the actual
data is that in the predictions it was predicted to go straight up not to curve. The only way to get
accurate measurements would have been to use an altitude meter but those are expensive.
Another suggestion is to calculate the predictions with a curve in order to get it more accurate.
Reflection
Before starting this project I kind of liked physics even though I had troubles
understanding the content sometimes that was being learned. This project helped me solidify my
knowledge of things that before I had no idea how to do, and now this content is one of my
strong points. This project also helped me understand all of the work that goes into preforming
an experiment and how fun it can actually be. In doing this project one of the major problems I
came across was typing up the reports. At first I was thinking about just getting it done and as
time went on the more I thought about what I learned the easier it became to write the report. I
actually saw it as more of an aftertime thing that I had fun doing than a tiresome assignment. If I
would have stayed in the mindset that I was in when I started this project I would of hated it, and
everything about it. In order to overcome that I decided to invest my time into it and in doing that
I have a project that is better than I thought I could do.