Designing and Building Rocket #2

After we had launched our first rocket we had moved on to building and designing our second rocket. To design it we copy and pasted our first rocket design onto a new google drawing. The rule was, we could only change one thing on our rocket. Not two or three because then we wouldn’t know what failed. My group decided to change the fins because one of the groups that went the highest had skinny, and tall, fins. So we did the same thing almost to improve our rocket. After we had changed our fins we changed up the color too. Our rocket body was skinny, the nose cone was point and small, and the fins were thin, and tall. 

Building our rocket was so much easier than building the first rocket, because we had already built a rocket we knew what to do to build our second rocket. It was easy this time. We folded up the paper to make our body, though that did take a few tries only because we kept on letting go of the paper and kept unrolling. Other than that it was pretty easy to build the rocket. The nose cone was super easy to make. I made it. I had to put tape all around it too but that was easy for me. The fins everyone else took care of because I was doing the nose cone. After we had got everything on we were set and good for our next launch.

With my group everyone was agreeing on everything. It turned out to be good and in the beginning I thought the group could never get along but after the first launch, we all had a better bond. Though while designing we did argue rarely about colors of the rocket, how big and small fins were, and deciding what the one thing would be that we’d change from the first rocket. But after all, I’m happy with my group. 

Launching and Graphing Rocket #1

A day after we had finished designing and building our rockets our teacher told us we would launch the next day. Everyone was so excited for our first launch! My team could not wait for the launch!

For our launch there were jobs. One job was launching and placing the rocket, another was countdown master and rocket retriever, and the last two jobs were air pumpers. For our first launch how we decided jobs was we picked out of paper in a cup. We all put our names in and we picked out one name. That one name got to pick what they wanted their job to be first. My name got picked second and I picked rocket launcher and placer. 

The day of the rocket launch we went out to the field and everyone gathered around to listen to the instructions. My team went last because we are the last team, team 6. When one team went there were four clinometer readers and they would split into two groups and one would go to the back field and one would to the blacktop. Then when the team launches the readers get into action and they use the clinometer to read how high it goes. Our team’s rocket went pretty high! It went 118 Feet high! Wasn’t as high as the other teams but we are still proud of how high it went. I think it was a very successful launch as I thought it would be a big fail. Nothing fell so I was very happy about that!

Everything was good with the collaboration, and I think we all got along much. Sometimes we had arguments but not very much. It was rare if we had an argument.  I think after launch #1 our relationships with each other got stronger and better.

 

Designing and Building Rocket #1

Designing our rocket was hard. We couldn’t always agree on what our parts of the rocket would  look like. Half our group wanted long fins and the other half didn’t want that. But someone in the group was always messing around and stuff so it was very hard to work. 

We had a pointy nose cone so that the air hits off the top and helps it glide better. We had a skinny body because it will shoot up instead of slowing down with the wider tube. We also had 3 fins because it will help with stability and the fins will help the fins stay in the direction the rocket is launched in.

Building our first rocket also took a lot of time and we didn’t know exactly how to build it like what materials and stuff. We didn’t know what color it’d be and what tape we’d use for the rocket and what color the fins would be and stuff. We had to always vote while building our rocket. We didn’t very much get long. But in the end our rocket turned out great and the launch was successful!

Rocketry Reflection

In class we are doing a unit in science called Rocketry. Right now we are designing our first rocket design! All we have done is our inspiration board and the inspiration board is supposed to inspire us.

The inspiration board took a long time because my group didn’t really know what stuff to put. We were also disagreeing about what quotes inspire us personally. We were having a pretty hard time finding out what to put and we put “the three laws of motion” by Isaac Newton but our teacher said we had to put a text box about how it helped us with our rocket design and we did not know what that exactly meant when she said it. We then took very long to figure out what to write and by then we were a mess and behind all the other groups. We finished a few days after.

Our rocket design is very simple. How we came up with was that two of our group members made each a rocket on google drawings, but after they had finished we had realized that they were the same except they were different colors. The other two group members then voted on which one was better and then the group members who voted made a rocket each and the same thing happened. They voted. We then took the two winners rockets and combined them! It was cool to see the features on one combined with another, and that became our final first rocket design.