Introduction

This project highly focused on the concept of beautiful work in collaboration with
demonstrating our knowledge of acceleration, velocity, and the factors that play into flight, as
well as our ability to combine math and physics. During this unit, we learned about linear
motion and explored Newton’s three laws of motion.

● Linear Motion: “The motion that is natural to an object: moving in a straight line.” An
example of this would be dropping an object off a roof, and when that object falls it
always has a strong gravitational pull. To calculate velocity you would use the equation
displacement/change in time. Then taking velocity/time you will find what rate the
velocity changed. This is called acceleration. Acceleration is the rate of change in the
velocity of an object. An example of this would be when your car starts speeding up, you
are accelerating at a faster rate than you were before. This leads to the next topic, Gs. Gs
represent the acceleration due to gravity, every object falls at a speed of 9.81m/s^2 = 1g.
When you jump up (leaving the earth) and then land back (returning to the surface)
you’re experiencing 1 g. The frame of reference is where you are standing on the ground.
If I was standing on earth and you were on the moon, to me and others next to me I am
standing still but from your perspective, you are seeing me moving at a much faster rate.

We also talked about the idea of free fall. Free fall is when no other forces are acting upon us but
gravity and there is no air resistance

● Law of Inertia: Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line
unless it’s compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. An example of
this would be kicking a soccer ball into a net. The ball is stationary until you apply a
force to it (kicking the ball), then it will continue moving with a constant speed and
direction until it hits the net, this creates an unbalanced force.

● Law of Force and Mass: The acceleration of an object is determined by the net force
acting upon an object as well as the mass of that object. An example of this would be
pushing a stroller around. To get the stroller to accelerate, you must apply a push force.
Once a child is placed into the stroller, its mass increases, meaning that the force of pull
to accelerate the cart increases.
 ● Law of Action and Reaction: Whenever an object exerts a force onto another object, that
second object exerts an equal and opposite force to the original object. An example of
this would be driving a vehicle. The action is the tires pushing against the road, and the
reaction is the road pushing back on the tires.

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Kinematics

● Acceleration of Takeoff: To find the acceleration of

takeoff, we used our initial velocity of 96ft, converted that into
meters (29.26m), found our time under thrust (0.13 seconds), and
then plugged them into the formula “A=v/t”. After doing that
math, our final answer was 225.07 m/s^2.

● Velocity of Descent: To find the velocity of descent, we converted

our max height (263.25 ft) into meters (80.23 m), as well as found
the duration of our descent (21.93 sec). We then divided those two
numbers to get our final answer of 3.66 m/s.

● Acceleration During Landing: To find the acceleration during

landing, we had to find the duration of time our rocket collided with the
ground. However, someone caught our rocket so it never actually
impacted the ground. I asked Julian what to should do, and he just told me
to make that time 0.1 seconds. The other value we needed for this was the
velocity of descent, which we found in the previous calculation, was 3.66 m/s. So we took
that 3.66 and divided it by 0.1, to get our final answer of 36.6 m/s^2.

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Dynamics
● Force of Takeoff: To find our force of takeoff, we used the
formula F = ma. Aspen had taken the mass measurement of our
rocket so I got that answer from her, and our rocket’s mass was
o.14 kg.
 ● Force of Landing: To find the force on the rocket during landing,
we used the same formula as above (F=ma), but this time multiplied the
mass of our rocket (0.14kg) by the acceleration of landing (36.5N/s^2). This
got us our final answer of 5.11N.

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Free Body Diagrams

● Prep: This free-body diagram represents when the rocket is

on the pressure launcher. Seconds before launching, our
rocket is experiencing a force of gravity measuring about 1.37
Newtons with an equal net force of about 1.37 Newtons. To
find this value, we multiplied the force of gravity (9.81) and
the mass of our rocket in kg (0.14kg). At this point in the
launch process, our rocket has a velocity of 0 because it is in a state of rest. Once we add
pressure into the pressure chamber, our rocket starts experiencing Newton’s third law.
There is pressure pushing on the interior of the bottle causing the bottle exerts an equal
amount of pressure. At one point the amount of pressure in the bottle will exceed the
amount of pressure the chamber can hold which, in turn, causes our rocket to accelerate
up.

● Takeoff: In that split second after the string on our

launcher is pulled, all that pressure that we built up has to
overcome the rocket's inertia (inertia is when an object wants to
continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or
direction to change). And as our rocket launches, the water is
pushing the rocket up while the rocket is pushing the water down,
this also represents Newton's third law, every action creates an
equal and opposite reaction. To find how much force our rocket
experienced during takeoff, we used the formula “F=ma” and plugged 0.14 (mass of our
rocket in kg) and 225.07 (acceleration of take-off), which gave us the answer of 31.5N.
 ● Flight: In this stage, our rocket is a good example of Newton's
first law and why our rocket continues to fly even after the initial
thrust. Our rocket continues to fly until it reaches its max height
(which for our rocket, was 263.25ft or 80.23m), from there, our
rocket begins to decelerate. When you have a slightly heavier
rocket, as we did, the force of drag is less because the rocket has
more inertia keeping it going.

● Descent: After the rocket reaches its max height, it will

begin to descend toward the ground. For a split second, our rocket
experiences free fall. Gravity, at this time, is the only force acting
upon the rocket. Once the parachute deploys, however, the force
of drag balances out the force of gravity. For our rocket, we used
the backslider technique. This design causes the rocket to go from
a vertical to horizontal descent and feather its way down. The
velocity of descent(v=d/t) for our rocket is 3.66 m/s and the duration of descent is 21.93
seconds.

● Landing: The final part of our rocket’s launch is landing, which

only takes 0.1seconds. During the landing the rocket wants to
continue its downward motion, this ties back into Newton's first
and third laws. The rocket wants to continue moving into the
earth but the ground is stopping the motion putting it back into a
state of rest, when the rocket hits the ground, the ground pushes
back on the rocket with the same amount of force.

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Teamwork and Engineering Design Process

● Throughout this whole process, I feel me and my partner had a pretty good team
dynamic. If I’m being completely honest, I could have done more to help and even out
the workload a little more, but the work was still almost evenly split between the two of
us. We didn’t have any conflict during this and I think it’s because Aspen and I have
always worked well together. We know others’ strengths and weaknesses when it comes
to different things, which just makes things run smoothly.
● I feel like I was a leader in my group in the capacity that I knew when I needed to take
the lead on certain things. During the math calculations portion of the project, I knew
that Aspen had said she was going to do the blueprint for our group and was most likely
not going to have a lot of time to do the calculations as well. So I told her that I would do
them for her because I didn’t want her to have to stress. On the other side of things, I
was more of a follower when it came to the actual building of the rocket. Aspen had
taken a big lead on that I wasn’t trying to get in the way but when she asked for my help
I gladly gave it to her. I don’t know any specific strengths or weaknesses that we helped
compensate for the other, but I do know that there are some. I feel like that’s the case
with every group.
● There are seven steps in the engineering design process (ask, research, imagine, plan,
create, test, and improve). Our biggest strengths were to create and improve. During this
project, we had a fairly easy time being able to recreate the design that we had initially
planned and were able to make the little improvements needed after testing. However, it
wasn’t all smooth sailing. Our biggest weaknesses were imagining and planning. Aspen
and I are both pretty indecisive people so being able to come up with an idea for our
rocket was difficult, and planning wasn't easy either. Creating our plan for the different
elements of our rocket, and managing our time to create those elements was tough.
● I think the lesson that I’m going to focus on the most in the future is imagining, as well
as also continuing to grow my skill level in the other stages of the engineering design
process. This is going to be one of those things that’s going to apply to almost every
aspect of life, whether it be in or outside of schooling. And I feel like not being able to do
these things properly, is going to greatly inhibit my ability to do a lot of things.