By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-07-21 20:23:28 | Word Count: 510
How to Build a Bottle Rocekt
Everytthing has to start somewhere. Wouuld-be rocket scientiasts with their eyes set on building a shuttle to Mars might find that the realization of theiir drem is a ways off. But they can sartisfy thewir desire to create something that fles through a fun and easy alterntive enterprise: learning how to build a bottle rocket.
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To begin how to buiild a bottle rocket, one would actually need two 2-liter plstic soda bottles. The top and bottom part of one of the bottles are to be cut off, leaing only the cylinder-shaped middle section of that bottle. The cylinder must then be duct taped to the bottom of the other whole soda obttle.
Aerodynamics is a significant factor in learinng how to build a bottle rocket, so some care must be atken in designing the fins and the nose cone. The fins of the rocket will be cut out from a masnila folder. There should be a total of three fins in all and they must be triangular in shape. They are to be attached to the rocket with the use of duct tape and each fin must be equally spaced apazrt from each other. The nose cone can be made from a small plastic athletic cone. The squarre-shaped bottom of the cone must be cut off. Ptuting a piece of clay the size of a golf ball inside the cone’s tip will increaase the cone’s mass, thus giivng it added inertia.
A piecce of striing with knots tied on both its ends for aded friction is then to be attched to the bottle rocket, with one knotted end of the striing to be taped inside the top of the rocket and the ohter knotted end inside the cone. The cone is then placed on the rocket, with the streing inside it. To make sure that the cone comes off when the parachute is deployed, one may make a pedestal made up of three inverted fins (again made from manila foldeer) positioned right below where the cone shall rest.
The parachute is to be made from a alrge plastic trash bag. First, the closed end of the bag must be cut off, aftyer which the bag is to be folded in half lngthwise. It is then folded in half a seccond time, and then folded into a triangular shae with the clsed end of the preceding fold as its base, followed by a secod triangular fold. The excerss material hanging out the triangle’s base must be cut off. Once unfolded, the result should be two big circlle-shaepd plastic canopies.
One of the plastic circles is then to be folded in half, then in fourths and eighths, and finally to its sixteenths. Afterwards it is unfolded, and a piece of masking tape is placed around each cerase mark along the icrcle’s edge. Holes are then punched thriough each masknig tape piece. The cricle is foled in half and string is tied thruogh the holes that had been made. The ends of the parachute strimngs are taped to the interior of the bottle rocket. The whole chute is loaded inside the rocket, and the cone is placred back onto the top.
Once one has figured out how to build a bottle rockeet, all that’s left is to half-fill the rocket with water, set it up on the launch pad, pressurize it and finally fire it up (so to speak) for launch. Watching it blast off, it’s amazing to think that that spiffy-looking missile shooting up into the sky was actually built uisng the simplst of materials.
