Reflection (50pts)

What challenges did you encounter in this project and how did you navigate those
challenges?

As one would expect, an engineering, physics, trigonometry, and quadratic formula-centric

project would come with its fair share of challenges. Luckily for me, the person I was paired with, Shea
Davis, was cooperative and extremely helpful, thus all of the challenges we encountered together weren't
born of miscommunication or arguments. Though out of all of the little things we overcame, I believe that
the most challenges had to do with our primary rocket, “The Atheist.” We ended up splicing two bottles
together to make The Atheist. At first, we were very concerned about the splice, splicing is tricky to get
right. As we spliced the bottle that would be the internal one, the edge continually warped so that when it
was placed inside the other bottle a sustainable seal couldn't form. Due to this, later that day we had to
redo the splice, meaning that all of the time it took to do the splice had been wasted, though this second
splice luckily held. With our splicing problem out of the way, we could focus on our parachute
deployment system, easily the trickiest part of the whole build. As there are many options for deploying a
parachute, this step took us a while to finish. We had to weigh all of the benefits and disadvantages of
each option. So, after careful consideration, we decided to have a loose-fitting nose cone that could easily
fall off to release the parachute. Yet, due to the nature of the small Smart Water bottles we utilized, the
nose cone was far too loose, so we added a wooden dowel so the nose cone wouldn't immediately fall off
once the rocket launched. This dowel would later cause us great difficulties. Firstly, the dowel, along with
the other changes we made by tightening the nose cone made the cone remain in place as the rocket
reached max height, causing it to tip downward. The cap and the parachute stayed in place, causing a
high-velocity nose dive. The rocket wasn't significantly damaged in the first crash, and after a few
adjustments, we were ready for another launch. Though every other test of The Atheist resulted in an
uncontrolled nose dive, with the nose cone still firmly in place. And on the final test, the dowel on the top
was pressed inward with great force when the rocket’s nose cone hit the ground, causing a fracture in the
rocket’s pressure chamber, meaning that the rocket could no longer hold enough pressure to launch.
However, the wooden dowel wasn't the only thing that caused the nose-dive problem. After further
investigation, we decided that because of the large size of the wings when the Atheist reached its
maximum height, instead of falling straight back down, causing the nose cap to dislodge, it began to curve
downward. So the cap pointed downward, making it impossible for the cap to dislodge and the parachute
to be released before it hit the ground. To remedy the challenges brought on by both the dowel, we first
cut back the dowel as far as possible, then we filled the little indent on the bottom of the bottle where the
crack persisted with PL premium glue, enough so that it even covered the dowel, which we couldn't
remove. To remedy the slight problems caused by the fins, we cut a small triangle from each of the three
wings to make the wings smaller. Sadly, due to time constraints, we were unable to test this new and
improved rocket. Even now we don't know if our adjustments worked, or if the rocket would have even
launched. We were also never able to fully fix our parachute problem either, throughout the entire process
it was released during only one test. This same problem even got our secondary rocket disqualified from
the competition, even though we thought that we had mostly solved the problem.
 What were your successes in this project and how would you relay those successes to next
year’s sophomores?

There were a multitude of small triumphs throughout this project, and even some large successes
that led to fantastic results. The largest success that Shea and I had in this project would have to have been
our littlest rocket, Blast-phemy, beating the AHS record, reaching 367 feet high. The interesting thing is
that both Shea and I have no idea how a single-chambered rocket, that was built in half an hour, was the
most successful of all the rockets this year in terms of height. Its height wasn't a fluke either, as the second
time we tested it, which was the exhibition launch, it again reached over 350 feet. There isn't exactly a
way that we could pass any advice about this to any future sophomores unless we just let them examine
and reverse engineer Blast-phemy. Then they could tell us how it worked.

We had many other little successes that we actually could pass on to future sophomores, such as
The Atheist’s large fins and straight flight, our successful second splice, and our effective teamwork. The
three large fins on our rocket aided our rocket in its extremely straight flight path, meaning that it didn't
lose height by being shot at an angle like many other rockets. We stumbled on to the idea of large fins a
bit by accident, but it proved to be successful after we tested The Atheist, going 240 feet, beating the AHS
record. Although large wings have their benefits, they also come with downfalls, such as the problems
discussed in the above paragraph, that future sophomores need to be aware of.

Another thing I hope future sophomores will keep in mind is that getting a good splice is
relatively difficult, and our first splice reflected that difficulty. As I also discussed in the first paragraph,
the first splice we did had a warp rendering it unable to hold pressure, so the same day Shea and I pulled
the bottles apart to redo the splice. The part that made our new splice successful was that we took our
time. First, shrink the edge of the internal bottle so it easily fits within the other bottle. Secondly, we made
the overlap between the two bottles very wide, so that we could apply more glue. After the glue was on
we carefully wrapped the splice in many layers of duct tape, handling the newly spliced bottles extremely
carefully. Really, to get a good splice all you need is patients and care.

Though the real success throughout the project was the honest and timely communication
between my partner and me and our willingness to always be helpful to one another. This sort of thing
may sometimes be overlooked, but having a helpful and attentive partner can help the group overcome
many challenges. Open communication and willingness to help allowed Shea and I to bounce ideas off
one another and multitask to get things done on time. Shea might have been hunting down tape while I cut
the nose cap down to size, so we could do things promptly. Or we would brainstorm and problem solve
together until we were both satisfied with a solution. Like how together we ran through multiple ideas,
some implemented and some not, of how to work the parachute release mechanism. Using this method,
instead of just working completely individually on separate tasks, we were able to get multiple
perspectives on each problem. At one point, I wanted to tighten the nose cap on The Atheist, but after
talking to Shea he pointed out that it could worsen the problem of the nose cap not coming off. So we
talked until we decided on putting pieces of plastic around the edge of the bottle so that the cap couldn't
slide completely over the bottle and get stuck, which worked much better than our previous ideas. I
believe that having a collaborative partner was one of the most important components that aided our
successes. We worked through disagreements more quickly and were able to have more perspectives on
every problem we encountered.

What was a turning point for you in this project and why?

The turning point in this project for Shea and I was when we discovered that sometimes simpler is
better in a rocket design, whether it consists of making the rocket lighter or just having less moving parts.
The perks of simplicity were apparent when our secondary rocket Blast-phemy, which took shea and I
only an hour to complete, outperformed our, probably, over engineered primary rocket The Atheist. We
started with our primary rocket, the Atheist, which worked well enough, beating the original AHS
rocketry record, with 240 something feet. Though, from what I can remember, we were never able to get
the parachute to deploy. After we finished the main build of the Atheist, we moved into working on a
backup rocket, Blast-phemy, in case the Atheist, which had been spliced, failed. Time after time, the
Atheist failed to release its parachute and nose divided during each attempt to launch it. Each time taking
more and more damage, which was a bit disheartening. Eventually, we tested Blast-phemy, a single bottle,
3-finned rocket, to make sure it was functional, and to our flabbergasted amazement, it flew 350 feet on
our first try, out stripping the Atheist by nearly 100feet. We were amazed by this, though we thought that
as the design was so simple the occurrence had just been a fluke, so we resolved to fly the Atheist at the
rocket exhibition instead, so as not to risk anything. However, on our final test of the Atheist, it took a
sharp nosedive with, again, no parachute, resulting in a large crack at the top of the pressure chamber.
Although this was very disappointing, I was a little excited to have to use Blast-phemy at the exhibition. It
may have been more simple but if it flew much higher and the parachute released on our first attempt. We
did try to repair the Atheste, though we never had the chance to test it, meaning that the fixes and changes
we had made to it might not have turned out successful. And since there was a small chance that
Blast-phemy’s incredible height wasn't a fluke, we instead entered it in the exhibition competition. Low
and behold it performed even better in height at the exhibition, though this time lacking a parachute. It
was a blessing in disguise that we had to use our back up rocket instead of the one we actually spent all
the time engineering.
As of now I don’t think you answered this question. You have the evidence and the analysis but
you are lacking the topic sentence. I think you could frame this as the major turning point for this project
was realizing the simpler is better when you are building rockets. You had a complex design, but you ran
into design challenges and saw poorer results compared to your back up rocket. I think you and Shea
realizing that Bast-phemy was superior was the turning point because of how simple it was. There was
less stuff so it made it lighter, there were 3 fins instead of 4 which made it lighter and have less drag. The
only flaw with Blast-phemy is it did not have a reliable parachute system.

What lessons did you learn while doing this project, and how could you apply those lessons
in your future projects and life?

I’ve never really done an engineering type project like this before, and so I learned a lot of new
things about time management, collaboration and problem-solving, pushing myself out of my comfort
zone, and refining and testing. Even though other Animas projects have refinement processes, we've
never had to test our work before. I already consider myself to be good at managing my time, but in this
project we had many small self-led tasks, like testing the rocket and then refining whatever we needed on
our own. In previous projects, we've had concrete tasks to accomplish each day, and all you had to do was
stay on task and you would get everything done. But here, it was like a choose your own adventure book,
doing what you need to do to be ready for and successful at the exhibition, with hardly any external
guidance because all the groups were in different places. Pared with time management, I also learned to
do the most important things that take the most time first, like splicing. If we had even waited another day
to do or redo our splice we may have run out of time or rushed and done a poor job. Luckily, this lesson
wasn't a hard one learned. As I reflect on it I realize how pivotal it could have been if I had misplaced my
work priorities or wasted time on any of the building or engineering design process steps, especially with
splicing. Having already learned this lesson, I will be able to adjust more easily to really any project I do
in the future, especially those based in STEM. I foresee myself working in a STEM field one day and I
will definitely take more classes in STEM in my highschool career. I also learned the importance of
taking testing and refining seriously. If Shea and I had gone with the very first, unchanged prototype our
rocket would have failed. Each test we conducted helped us find weird mistakes or problems with our
rocket, as with the Atheist and the overly large wings. After testing it a few times and changing little
things here and there to see what would happen, we finally cut down the wing size to prevent nose-diving.
Which might have worked, though we were never able to test that version of it. This skill will be very
useful in my later life, as it's like a more in-depth revision process, which again will be very useful in any
project based setting, but especially in STEM classes and other projects that I might work on outside of
school. It would have been great to have the engineering design process as a tool when I created a project
about bioplastics, it would have saved me a lot of time if I had refined the project and my bio plastics
instead of starting from scratch each time And finally, I think one of the most important lessons I’ll take
away from this project is pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. I struggle with anxiety from time to
time, and at the beginning of this project, I was riddled with anxiety about an optional calculus lesson that
had been mentioned. Even though it was optional, I wanted to go, but at the same time, I was worried
about how hard it would be. I eventually decided to just go, and see how it would turn out. Even though I
was very nervous about it at first, I enjoyed the lesson. Before, I had seen calc as only something to fear,
but after forcing myself to go outside of my comfort zone I was able to erase my trepidation about the
topic. From now on I’m going to keep this scenario in my mind so that I can try new things even if I’m a
bit nervous and expand my comfort zone. It was a great experience and it's a great chance to prove to
myself that if I try new things it could expand my knowledge and potential.

If you were to do this project again, what would you do differently and why?

If I were to do this project again there would be a few key things that I would change that could
have changed the outcome of either of our rockets. First and foremost, I would have done much more
research about what makes bottle rockets successful, such as: what shapes of fins would have been the
most successful, how to balance the weight of the rocket to prevent nose-diving and keep it as light as
possible, how to slim it down to minimize air resistance, and most importantly, as this eventually became
a recurring problem, what would have been the most successful type of parachute deployment system.
Shea and I of course did a bit of research, as per the Engineering Design Process, but I wished we would
have done more. Interestingly, the thing we spent most of our time researching was parachute deployment
types, we settled on one of the simplest types to make. Thinking back on it, we should have gone with an
even more simple parachute design of just draping the parachute over the rocket's nose cone, which is
much simpler and guaranteed to work. Doing more research on bottle rockets could also have given us
insight into what made Blast-phemy so successful, which I’m still very curious and baffled by. If I could
redo this project I would also not add the small dowel rod to the top to hold on the nose cone. Because of
that little dowel, each time our rocket nose-dived, an unnecessary amount of damage was dealt to our
primary rocket. So much so, that on our second or third launch the resultant impact caused a, maybe,
unfixable dent in the pressure chamber. Granted, each time it nose-dived it would have sustained damage
anyway, but having the dowel made each crash much more detrimental. I also wish that after we repaired
the primary rocket, or at least tried to, we would have tested it again. Along with the glue we added to the
pressure chamber to fix the crack, we took material off of the wings to prevent nose-diving, and we
slightly changed our parachute deployment method. Sadly, we ran out of time to test it, and due to our
lacking confidence in that rocket and our hope for Blast-phemy we never flew The Atheist 2.0, and I am
still curious to see how these changes would have affected its flight.

(20pts) Reflection is honest, demonstrates a growth

mindset.

(5pts) Answers all reflection prompts.

(5pts) Clear, easy to understand, and devoid of

spelling/grammar errors.

(20pts) Every prompt answered includes evidence,

and proper analysis of how that evidence relates.