Rocket Height Lab

By: Shania Portilla

A4
For Mr. Hendricks Honors Physics

Abstract
 This lab was done in four sections, the first part of this rocket lab was
to find the thrust engine of a given rocket. The second part is to figure out
the drag coefficient, the drag coefficient helps to figure out how much air
resistance will be pushing down on the rocket and see how much the air
resistance affects the height of the rocket. Third part of is to use a numerical
iteration on an excel spreadsheet, the spreadsheet will help to give the
predicted height before launching to the rockets. Final part of the whole
process is to actually launch the rockets and measure the heights to see if
the prediction of the spreadsheet were true.

Rockets Predicted Height Actual Height

Red/Silver A8 30 23
Red/yellow B6 117 76
Small White A8 34 57
Red Silver B6 89 82
Red Yellow C6 240 147
Red Silver C6 158 104
Red Yellow A8 58 82

Introduction

The purpose for this project is that it uses all of the knowledge that has
been taught in the honors physics classroom and all of that knowledge is
applied and combined together for this project. The general purpose for this
lab is to figure out how high the rocket will go before theyre actually
launched. The height is predicted by doing different labs to get the predicted
height.
Definitions:

Kinematic: study of motion without referring to forces. Geometry of motion

or what it really is, it is part of the classical mechanics and it tells the motion
of points or objects.
Dynamics: idea of the force that influences a moving object (body).
Impulse: force acting briefly on a body and producing a certain limit of
change in the momentum.
Momentum: amount of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of
its mass and velocity.
Impulse/Momentum Theory: momentum is equal to the impulse.
F=ma
F t=m v
m v=m ( v f v i )=mv f mv i= p
The impulse needs to be known because there are several types of rockets.
There is A,B,C,D and E. The letters represent the impulse and A has a 2.5
impulse, B has 5, C has 10, D has 20, and E has 30. There are also numbers
at the end of the letters and that represents the average thrust is gives off.
Example, C6 engine has an impulse of 10 and a thrust of 6 newtons. To figure
out the predicted heights the heights are found by using a spreadsheet that
uses numerical iteration.
Numerical Iteration: There are also numbers at the end of the letters and
that represents the average thrust is gives off. Example, C6 engine has an
impulse of 10 and a thrust of 6 newtons.

Engine Thrust Analysis

This is the first lab for of rocket project. In this lab the students
need to figure out what kind of engine the rocket can have. There are many
different types of engines and each engine has a different type of impulse.
There is either A, B, C, or D impulse. Each impulse has different types of
thrusts.
Impulse: A B C D
Thrust: 2.5, 5, 10, 20
The first thing that was done was start with the digital force gauge, the
digital force gauge measures the pulling and pushing forces. Once both of
the rockets and the gauge are ready, the students can start to gather the
data. Mr. Hendricks calculator was hooked up to the force gauge and the
program called Data Mate was used to get results, this program is able to
measure the force in newtons. When Mr. Hendricks Calculator was plugged
some really odd numbers were recorded. So in order to get good results Mr.
Hendricks put a book under the rocket engine to make the rocket at an
angle, so in the calculator to get the results you have to zero it out or else
you will get the residual error. You now need to set the triggers. The trigger is
when the sensor first senses the force and it will stop once you set a certain
time for it to stop. On the calculator you go to time graph and you set it up to
be 1/10 of a second. You then need to make the trigger decrease, you need it
to decrease because the force gauge senses a pushing force as negative and
you need the data to be negative. Now that everything is set up we light out
rocket.
We had a wire that had 2 tips, one tip had phosphorous on it which acts
like a match, you then hook up the other cable to jumper cables. Emery then
turned the nob on the battery that the jumper cables were connected to. The
rocket was then ignited. Once we got our data we had to figure out if it was
a A, B, C, or D engine, to figure this out you need to find the area under the
graph that the calculator gave to you. To find the area you need to calculate
the height and the width of each point. The width was the same which was .1
becauses the time was every 1/10 of a second.

T= Time F=Force
 0 0
.1 0
.2 0
.3 .3 N
.4 6.0 N
.5 10.9 N
.6 5.8 N

.7 4.8 N

.8 4.7 N

.9 4.5 N

1.0 4.6 N

1.1 4.4 N

1.2 3.3 N

1.3 0

Now you find what type of engine it is.

.
3(0)+6.0(.1)+10.9(.1)+5.8(.1)+4.8(.1)+4.7(.1)+4.5(.1)+4.6(.1)+4.4(.1)+3.3(
.1)= 4.9
4.9 is close to 5 which makes it a B engine.

Drag Coefficient Lab

In the previous lab the purpose was to figure out what type of engine
the rocket was, the purpose for this lab is to determine what the drag
coefficient of the rocket is. In order to figure out how high our rocket will go,
we need to understand how air resistance (drag force) works. We need to
learn a way to predict the height of the rocket by predicting what the drag
force will be (due to air resistance) for the rockets.
Set Up & Procedure
Physicists have found experimentally that the drag force on a fast-
moving object is proportional to the square of the velocity of that object.
The equation that we used to figure out the drag force was Fdrag =Kd V 2
The Kd in the equation is called the drag coefficient. The value of Kd
depends on the size and shape of the object (rocket). Once you know what
Kd is you can easily determine what the drag coefficient is at any velocity.
The drag coefficient is very important because objects such as cars if they
have sharp edges and look like a bow they dont get much gas mileage
because their drag coefficient is very high but objects that have smooth
edges such as modern cars, they have better gas mileage. This is very
important because the smooth edges of the car have low drag coefficients.
The object that has the high drag coefficient is called Turbulent flow and the
object with the low drag coefficient is called Laminar flow.

Turbulent

Now to determine the drag coefficient for the

rocket. We used a wind tunnel. Inside the wind
tunnel it has honeycomb type structure. The
honeycomb is needed because without the
honeycomb the rocket will bounce around and be
out of control, if you dont have the honeycomb it
will be very difficult to get an accurate angle of the
rocket. The honeycomb lets laminar air go through
the wind tunnel rather than having turbulent air.
The rocket has better control. Now the rocket is
hung by a string and inside the wind tunnel there is
a protractor. When the wind blows through the wind
tunnel it will push the rocket at an angle and the
protractor is there to measure at what angle the
rocket was pushed at.
 Now an equation is needed to determine both
directions the y direction and the x direction.
F x =ma x {Fd +Tsin=ma x
The equation above is for the X direction and the
equation below is for the Y direction.
F y =m a y {mg+tcos=ma y
Once we have both equations we then need to
combine them to make only ONE equation. To do
that you need to combine the equation
Fdrag =K v 2
Once you have combined all of the equations, your final equation will be
mgtan ()
k=
v2
We did the wind tunnel 3 times and the
angles we got were, Angles: 30, 29, 34
The average of all of them is 33. The
mass of the rocket is 61 g which we then
converted to 0.06. The velocity we used
was 30. So now that we have all of the
numbers we now plug them in to the
equation.
1) Fd =.061 ( 9.8 ) tan ( 33 )=.38
2) K d =4.31 x 104 ( 120 ) =6 n

The speed is 6n and that is the drag coefficient of the rocket.

Numerical Model
Purpose
The purpose for this lab is to predicts our results for when we launch
our rockets and to see when we do launch the rockets if we calculated our
predictions correct. Also the spreadsheet that we are going to use is
including all of the knowledge that we have learned since the beginning of
the year.
Set Up & Procedure
Now to predict the heights of the rocket we used a spread sheet to help
determine the height of the rockets. Each column of the spread sheet has a
purpose on how we calculated the height of the rocket.
First column is for the time intervals; the information is recorded every 0.1
seconds. The Second column is what the thrust of the rocket is at the time
of the time interval. The thrust information is given in the spread sheet.
Third column is 2 of the thrusts that are both right after each other. By this I
mean you pick the thrusts that are at the 0.1 and 0.2 time intervals because
they are right after each other. Once you pick 2 thrust forces you then Add
them together and Divide by 2 to get the average force. Fourth column is
the drag force, the drag force is found by using the initial velocity from the
previous column and you multiply it by using the drag coefficient that was
determined in the previous lab which was 4 x 104 . The drag coefficient is
needed to see how much force the drag force is pushing down on the rocket;
this will affect the height of the rocket.
Fifth is the average net force, the average net force is need for later so that
we are able to find out what the average impulse is. The average net force is
found by getting the average thrust that was found earlier by subtracting
the mg and the drag force from it.
Sixth column is for the average impulse, the average impulse is used to find
the final velocity. The equation uses the average net force multiplied by the
change in time ( delta T). The change in time is 0.1 because that is what is
used in the time interval.
Seventh column is using the initial velocity of the rocket right when the time
interval starts. This is found by using the final velocity from the column
before.
Eight column is for the final velocity , this is for how fast the rocket is going
at the end of the time (time interval). To figure out the initial velocity is by
adding the initial velocity and adding the average impulse and dividing it by
the mass of the rocket including the engines mass.
Ninth column is the initial velocity and the final velocity from the previous
column added together, divide by 2 so that you have the average velocity
through the 0.1 second it went through.
Tenth column is where we determine the final height of the rocket, the initial
height is the height at which the time interval started.
Eleventh column is the final height, this is what needs to be solved to
compare to the final results when we actually launch the rockets. To figure
out the initial height is added to the average velocity and theyre both
divided by the change of time/delta T, only one.
Now we plug in the masses of the engine and the rocket combined
together into the spreadsheet with the found coefficient 0.0004 and thats
how we get the result that to predict our rocket.

Rocket A8 (distance) B6 (distance) C6 (distance)

Red Silver 58 m 146 m

Red Yellow 117 m 240 m

Silver White 31 m

Air resistance is important because it affects the outcomes of the predictions.

If the drag coefficient was 0 the height of the rocket could double.
 Flight Results

In this lab the rockets were launched to see if the results that were predicted
were correct and to see how close the predictions were.
Set Up & Procedure
3 people were 50 meters away from where the rockets were being
launched. The people had protractors with a string. The protractor forms an
equilateral triangle, there were a lot of protractors because if the rocket
curved there will be other angles and with those angles you could get the
average of all the angles just to get a single angle.

3 rockets were launched, for some of them the rockets were launched twice.
Each rocket had different engines.

Rockets Avg. Angle

Red Silver A 25 24 20 23
Red/Yellow B 71 65 31 56
Measured
Small Height
A 49 49 Predicted
45Height 48
23
White 30
Red 76
silver B 61 62 117 52 58
Red yellow C 89 60 65 71
Red silver C 71 75 45 64
Red yellow A 53 65 55 58
 57 34
82 89
147 240
104 158
82 58

The spreadsheet works by using the numerical model iteration technique. To

find the height of the rocket with the 3 angles, the equation is 50tan(0) and 0
represents the angle that was averaged from the 3 angles.
The heights are now known at this point , they can now be predicted from
the heights that were used in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is assuming
that the rockets went perfectly straight and none of them curved so the
results arent perfect.

Conclusion

Rockets Predicted Height Actual Height

Red/Silver A8 30 23 The
Red/yellow B6 117 76
Small White A8 34 57
Red Silver B6 89 82
Red Yellow C6 240 147
Red Silver C6 158 104
Red Yellow A8 58 82
results that were found and predicted some of the rockets were off but not all
of them. They were pretty good results. The things that went wrong was that
some of the rockets curved others didnt. There couldve been a better way
to predict the height of the rocket because a lot of things could go wrong by
using a spread sheet.

Reflection

With this lab I have a better concept of everything that we have learned in
physics so far. This lab uses bits and pieces that I wasnt really comfortable
with what we learned but once we did this lab and did everything as a whole
class it made me more comfortable with what we have learned. Other than
that I enjoyed doing this project because I got to launch a rocket which was
something that I have never done and I really liked the experience other than
doing all of the labs.

Conclusion
Rockets Predicted Height Actual Height The
Red/Silver A8 30 23
Red/yellow B6 117 76
Small White A8 34 57
Red Silver B6 89 82
Red Yellow C6 240 147
Red Silver C6 158 104
Red Yellow A8 58 82
results that were found and predicted some of them were off but not all of
them. They were pretty good results. The things that went wrong was that
some of the rockets curved others didnt. There couldve been a better way
to predict the height of the rocket because a lot of things could go wrong by
using a spread sheet.

Reflection

With this lab I have a better concept of everything that we have learned in
physics so far. This lab uses bits and pieces that I wasnt really comfortable
with what we learned but once we did this lab and did everything as a whole
class it made me more comfortable with what we have learned. Other than
that I enjoyed doing this project because I got to launch a rocket which was
something that I have never done and I really liked the experience other than
doing all of the labs.