Week 8: Bottle Rockets and Lots of Fun

Welcome back to my blog!

This week I did bottle rockets with my students! I purchased a STEM bottle rocket launcher online and we used it to launch our rockets extremely high in the air. I primarily worked with elementary and middle school students. It was a big crowd! I had around 20 students for the program!

Students were put into groups of 4, and they worked to customize their own rockets. Each group was given an empty bottle, and they added to it to try and create an aerodynamic bottle rocket. Students worked together to add different elements such as wings and noses to their bottle rockets. Each group had a different size and shaped bottle, so we were able to test how high different bottles went. Additionally, we had the middle and elementary school students compete against one another, so it was a fun little competition! I was able to also test the difference between using soda and water as rocket fuel with my students. Overall, we observed no major difference between the liquids in each of the bottle rockets. In fact, the water might have launched the rockets a little higher. 

During this session, I was able to teach students about aerodynamics, pressure, and air resistance. Furthermore, I also taught students about the value of observation and trial and error. By doing multiple experiments with different rocket fuels, rocket shapes, and rocket add ons students were able to see how multiple variables affected a rocket’s launch height.

I am not totally sure what we will be doing next program session, but I am excited to report back on that. Talk to you soon!

-Luc