3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!!!! It was another typical afternoon of science club...that's it if is typical to make non- Newtonian liquids and blast off rockets. Last Friday in our science club we made rockets out of paper and film canisters, yes you heard it right...FILM CANISTERS. They might be useless for cameras now a days but for our rockets the film canisters were the engine that help them lift off. But an engine without fuel is nothing; in this case our fuel was a mixture of water and Alka-Seltzer tablets. For every rocket we needed exactly 5mL of water and half tablet of Alka-Seltzer.
Although we all used the same measurements and same materials, not all of our rockets had the same success. The results varied significantly among the rockets: some went as high as two meters while others never took off. The variables to be consider for the malfunction of the rockets that never took off, that went sideways, or that went up just a few mere inches are: the wind’s intensity, how fast the students placed the lid on the film canister, and how long it took the student to place the rocket on the ground. We knew that we had to cover our film canisters as fast as we could but this didn't mean that all of them would be cover at the same time or same rate, after all we are human not robots.
We didn't have much control over these factors but we did have control over how much fun we allowed ourselves to have. And overall, we literally had a blast!!! We learned, we put into action our theories, and we went outside...it can't go better than that.
Stay tuned to hear more about our ridiculously awesome experiments, until then don't space out too much!
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