This week, Monique and I partnered up to create our very own...balsa rocket! At first, we found this task a bit daunting. I knew from my experiences last year that rockets weren't my area of expertise (or interest). I think acknowledging this very honest perspective helped me throughout this process. I understood that this was a weakness for me, and I would struggle greatly with building the rocket and understanding its functions as well. Working with Monique has been going smoothly, and I genuinely believe that we push each other to put out our best work. Creating the rocket itself was a bit of a struggle, but we watched our teachers video on how to do it, and it helped us out a lot. Down below I will list out what we accomplished each day.
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2.2.16 (Tuesday) - Today we began to work on our balsa rocket. We started by gathering the materials we needed. We referred to Andrew's video on how to create them, and decided as a group to follow the measurements he used. We took the balsa wood, and began to measure the sides and trace how we wanted them to look. Andrew showed us how to cut correctly, and we used his advice to cut out the first two sides. We quickly learned that you need a straight edge to help you cut, because some of our sides didn't come out as nicely as we hoped. Our teacher helped us out again, and we re-cut and edited our design.
2.3.16 (Wednesday) - Today Monique and I continued to cut out the sides to our rocket. Since we had Andrews help, it went a lot smoother. We weren't really happy with the sides of the rocket, but we learned that we would sand it down anyways. The next step was super gluing. We re-watched the instructional video, and got help from our teacher again. The first side we glued, we ended up gluing at an angle. Admittedly, it was my fault, and in turn it made out whole rocket look lopsided and weird. I quickly realized the mistake, and we were able to salvage the rocket by taking the sides apart again and gluing them back on in a normal square shape. It was difficult to figure out which piece we had to glue on top or bottom, but we managed to get it done. By the end of third period, we were able to begin sanding it down to create a smooth rocket shape.
2.4.16 (Thursday) - Monique and I continued to work on sanding our rocket down. We quickly learned that if you sand it too much on the wrong spot, it creates cracks in the design. We had to take some sawdust and super glue it into the cracks so the rocket would be able to function properly. I would say that today was the most difficult day by far, because our rocket kept coming apart. I felt bad because at one point, checking to make sure that the rocket was stable, I cracked the entire thing. Three of the sides came apart. This made me feel horrible, because we were just celebrating the fact that we had finally finished. In order to fix this, we took it back inside and got our teachers help to put it back together. Monique was a little worried, and put some super glue all down the inside of our rocket. This caused it to drip from the tip, so we had to wait a little longer for it to dry. While we were waiting, we decided to design and cut out the design of our fins. With a little bit of Avery's help, we were able to cut out two pretty awesome looking fins.
2.5.16 (Friday) - Today Monique and I picked up where we left off, and cut out the other two fins for our rocket. For some reason we were having a lot of trouble with it, and we messed up a lot. Luckily we managed to cut out two more identical fins. When we completed this, we super glued them onto the body of our rocket. Badaboom! We were finished! We then got two small pieces of wooden blocks, and began to make our mini motor machines. We got some help from our peers, and Monique drilled two holes into the side for one part of the hinge. We asked for advice from our teacher, but he suggested we move the holes up a little. He ended up helping us out by drilling the holes. He said that it would work even better than some of our peers, because it would put more pressure on the motor itself when we had to pack it. After the holes were drilled, we had to wait awhile for the screwdriver that was being passed around. Luckily, by the end of the period we were able to screw in one side of the hinge.
2.8.16 (Monday) - In class, we broke our rocket in the first ten minutes. Monique had knocked a fin loose when she had put her backpack in her cubby, and I accidentally hit another fin off when I was talking to our table group. This made us have to reglue the rocket. After this, we worked a bit on our mini rocket motor machine. We were able to screw in the other side of the hinge. Our teacher said that he would build us a latch for it, so we had to wait in line for a long time. After this, he said our machine was a bit off because there was a gap. Tomorrow we will find out if we have to redo the hinge in order to fix it.
2.9.16 (Tuesday) - Today we did a combustion lab, so unfortunately we made no progress on our rocket.
2.10.16 (Wednesday) - Today we spent both periods watching the movie "The Martian". It was awesome. Still, no progress was made on our rocket.
2.11.16 (Thursday) - Today, we did an extension of the combustion lab. We made our very first rocket motor! We were very happy to learn about the main components of it, the fuel, the tools needed to make it, how to use those said tools, and how to put it all together. Monique and I struggled greatly trying to make the motor, and constantly had to get help from our teacher, who was luckily only a few feet away. To our great surprise, when we went out to test it, it was one of the motors that flew the highest. At first we were ecstatic: We had did it! Then we felt a little bummed out because we didn't think to stick the motor in our actual rocket. By the end of third period, we were able to recreate the motor we had just made, but we realized that we were missing a piece of our rocket. We hadn't glued the little piece of wood that is supposed to be inside our rocket to hold it in place when it is launched. Our goal is the get that done by Tuesday, and launch our rocket by then as well.
2.16.16 (Tuesday) - Today we spent both periods doing another lab.
2.17.15 (Wednesday) - Today during first period, Monique and I were able to finally finish our rocket. We put in the little piece of wood to hold the motor in place, and our teacher helped us put on the little staples. We launched it, but it didn't do well. We tried again during third period.
FINAL REFLECTION:
Today we got to finally test out our rocket! This was definitely a long time coming, and we were relieved and excited to finally get it done. We had struggled getting all of the pieces together and completing the project, so it was nice to see it come to an end. During first period, we were able to launch. When our teacher ignited the fuse, it immediately started to smoke. It shot up a couple of feet and landed on the ground. Our teacher had said that this was because the cap of the motor blew off and the motor itself was old. We had built it last week, so it was sitting out collecting dust for almost 6 days. When we learned of this, Monique and I decided we would build another motor and try again in third period. We did this, and I was surprised to see how easy it all was. I discovered that I really liked making the rocket motors, and I enjoyed helping out my tablemates. When Monique and I were to test our rocket again, we were really nervous. At that point, we just wanted to get a good result so we could leave this mini project feeling satisfied with all of our hard work. This time, the rocket flew up into the air. It was so awesome to see, because all of the other groups didn't do so well and we thought ours wasn't going to as well. Our rocket hit the ground pretty hard, but we were surprised to see that it was perfectly fine. I think that building this rocket was an amazing experience. Monique and I really didn't think we would be interested in the whole rocket part of this section, but I think I can safely say that it wasn't so bad after all. We learned a lot about the craftsmanship behind it, as well as the science. The (rocket) science. ;)