The design of the rocket was meant to be small and aerodynamic, not too big just slim and pretty small. The rocket is 12 inches and 1 inch in diameter I think, the fins were meant to go out a little wide to stabilize the rocket and were made like parallelograms for them to look cool and be effective. The rocket had plenty of space from the top to bottom to fit the parachute. The rocket was made of completely cardboard and paper to be lightweight and somewhat sturdy. The final design of the rocket from the beginning didn't change at all from the original design. The only thing that changed was that we didn't use balsa wood for the fins. The final rocket looked pretty good but I messed up on the body by putting too much glue in the beginning and not having very straight paper strips to begin with. The rocket didn't work out as expected, at first the launch was fine then it curved to the left and proceeded in that direction for the whole duration of the flight. It went like this, it went straight and then curved left really hard probably because the launch pad was curved or the fins were uneven. Because the rocket went out of sight, we didn't see the parachute come out or anything. What happened was after takeoff we went to look for it and never found it so I figure it was a hard landing since it was so low to the ground and parallel to the ground.
My expectation was for the rocket to not have a perfect flight but close to it, it didn't turn out as expected but I'm just happy it flew well. What worked were the slim design, it went pretty fast and didn't have a whole lot of resistance. What didn't work is where I think the fault was and that was the fins were slightly off and i didn't have a counter balance to the launch lug either. Making this I learned about the core parts of a rocket and how to make them with commonly found resources. Every part to a rocket is important and the all work with each other for a stable fast flight and good recovery. Making a rocket from scratch is also pretty time consuming and not an easy task. What I would do differently next time is make sure the fins are perfectly aligned and make a parachute to break the rocket's fall instead of a streamer. In conclusion the rocket flight went well, the rocket flew really far to the left, and probably crash landed because we never found it and was really close to the ground. I' The Density Lab was all about buoyancy and how helium weighs less than air and because of density lighter things go up and more dense things go down. In this Experiment we were seeing if we could measure how much helium was in a balloon by putting the balloon at neutral buoyancy and knowing the difference between the mass of helium and air. So the question is can we find out how much helium was in the balloon?
The experiment went well but first we had to learn some background information. Density is mass over volume or grams over milliliters and with, also that buoyancy is the level to which two substances densities match. So knowing this we filled a balloon with helium and put tape on the balloon to get it to neutral buoyancy and after we got it to neutral buoyancy we popped the balloon and weighed it. Knowing how much the balloon weighs and the mass of air we subtracted the mass of the balloon by the mass of air. Then we divided it by 2572.15 cm cubed, then we found how much helium was in the balloon which was .001225g over cm cubed. I learned from this experience that in math and science having one thing or piece of information can help you find the missing piece of the puzzle. This applies to most everything really, in real life investigators can take blood, descriptions, and fingerprints to narrow down a suspect. Along the way I realized you can measure helium, air and a lot of things knowing bits and pieces of information. Also with this fun experiment I gained some knowledge about measurements and how scientists are just measure-rs and also are investigators. During this lab it was very guided work, which guided work is nice because the person teaching will always get the right point across, but I enjoy more hands on work with some guidance. I really like making things and discovering things on my own, but it is also useful to have help available, I'm not completely independent. This information is useful for the rest of chemistry, some of math, but mostly useful for understanding that everything natural is interconnected and that this Earth is amazing because of that. I think I could take this further by conducting it with something heavier than air maybe. This model rocket was my own rocket that my uncle gave to me for my birthday so I thought I would use it. The overall design is awesome it looks so sleek and aerodynamic, the color and Chinese firework theme also really adds to it. It was pretty easy to put together since everything was snap on and plastic. I pretty much just had to put it together, it was pretty easy to put together unlike some of the other model rockets I've seen people make. Once i put it together, which was a 30 minute process, It looked really cool I was very proud of myself but I realized that it was pretty easy and It was awesome. When I made the bottom I was a little confused but I understood what was what. Also with attaching the parachute to the nose cone I was slightly confused because you had to poke a hole in the nose cone. It worked very well, well at first the takeoff platform was slightly slanted so the rocket took off slightly to the side. in the middle of the flight it went relatively straight but It want far away from the front of us so we had to go retrieve it. The parachute cam down in time and it landed softly so no damage was visible except for getting dirt in the body. Afterwards I would say that it flew really straight and high into the air and I was very happy.
My expectation were that since it was a model rocket it would fly pretty straight and high, which is what it did so I am very happy with the results. What didn't work was that it didn't fly up perfectly straight, but not a whole lot of things went wrong. What I learned was that the rocket is propelled by the motor and when it is sparked it reacts and explodes, it propels the rocket into the air. The rocket is shaped so the wind forms around it with the nose cone it separates the wind and the fins stabilize the rocket in the air. It was a great experience making this rocket blast off and It was a lot of fun watching it. Next Time I would make sure the takeoff stand was straight. The flame test lab was a fantastic lab that was a lot of fun and educational as well. The lab was a series of hands on experiments. First we learned about background information and what happens to the atoms react to energy and how each act differently. We learned that you can identify an element without actually knowing what it is by burning it. The reason that certain elements burn different colors because different elements react differently to high amounts of energy. Some elements are better conductors than other as well as on an atomic level certain elements' electrons mover differently reflecting differently releasing potential energy. Going into this experiment Andrew set up a stand to hold the propane and the bunsen burner. We set up several elements that we were going to burn and we also had a spoon thing to hold the elements. When the experiment started we put on protective goggles to make sure our eyes would not get wounded. When the experiment started we were looking for what elements made what colors and what they did when burned. We started to make out the different colored flames of the different elements, through seeing all these elements you could see that they made colored flames and each element looked different when burning, some crazy bright and others with green flames. I realized that when these different elements were burning their electrons moved differently and they released different amounts of energy causing different colors to appear. What I learned was that different elements are composed differently and when you burn them you can see that, that is what is so beautiful about the world is when something like fire, so simple just concentrated heat can reveal some of the earth's secrets and really how everything is different. The main ideas from this lab were understanding what elements do when put under energy and their movements. Also what i got from this was that burning stuff is really cool honestly. I really enjoyed this lab and I gained a lot from it like how elements move and what they do and are composed of. |
Darian RoblesA mad chemist. Archives
December 2015
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