Up…up… & away!!
My science project dealt with rocket technology. My project goal was to see if you put a series of small weights into a rocket, would they affect the altitude of the rocket in flight? My hypothesis was that it would indeed affect the altitude.
Rockets are very interesting. Robert Goddard, Herman Oberth, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky are credited with inventing the rocket. The Chinese are credited with having the rocket as early as the 3rd century, but it was not until the 20th century that it began to take on its modern form. Rockets are used as weapons in war. This began during the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century. During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern space travel were laid out by the great English scientist sir Isaac Newton. (1642-1727).
I really enjoyed my project because, not did I only learn how to fly a rocket, and I also learned the parts and mechanics of the rocket. I also learned what is required for a rocket to fly and descend successfully. One of the things that was most interesting about my project was the rocket engine igniter. The igniter is what sets the rocket engine off, to blast the rocket off the launch pad! I thought it was interesting because if the igniter fails, the rocket engines will not fire. This happened during one of our test launches. The problem was fixed by replacing the faulty igniter with a new one. Once this was done the rocket launched as expected. This taught me that every component of the rocket plays an important part.
To conduct my experiment I purchased a rocket with an altimeter, to measure the distance of speed and height of our rocket. I then purchased three of the same types of rockets, so that when I launched my rocket, each of the three test flights would average the same distance. My hypothesis was that after my first test flight with no additional weight added, I would have a measure of altitude...