Final Blog Post

Ok, so when all was said and done, we think we did put in a good effort, to work on
our rocket, but we did not end up with the results that we wanted. For our final rocket
(as you can see), we added fins like we said we would. On our second day of launch,
this improved our unmodified rocket's time by 1 second (2 seconds to 3 seconds).
On the 3rd day of launch, in which we added a parachute (a plastic bag) and combined
both of our bottle together, which gave us a best time of 4.7 seconds. Not that we're bitter
or anything (yes we are), the weather on wednesday is most likely to blame for bringing
our fair time down to just 4 seconds (no modifications were made besides strengthening the
fins). Finally, on our last day of launch (the rocket used is the one shown below), we changed
out parachutes for a big garbage bag. After a few junk launches, cutting our bag into a big
rectangle gave us our final time of 5 seconds. The amount of water in the first 3 launches were approximately 500 milliliters. The amount of water in the last 2 launches were approximately 750 milliliters.

The addition that helped our rocket the most was the trash bag parachute because it caught the most wind. But on the same token, the reason we couldn't get the time needed was that it didn't  catch enough
wind. Either that, or our rocket was too heavy for it to support.

Here is a record of our development, from day 1 to the final launch day.
Both in video form and picture form.

Final Launch day

This here is another example of another day that should NOT be used for launching bottles.
But alas! We did so anyways. Here we have our last attempt to break an impossible
air time of 10 seconds. The biggest problem that our rocket seemed to have was the amount of
weight we had going for it in comparison to the amount of air being caught by the parachute. Since the parachute seemed to be unable to sustain such weight, the descent seemed all too quick, leading to the demise of our project grade for the day. We first tried cutting small holes in the trash bag I brought and tying it to our rocket, which seemed like a great idea. After a few bad launches, we decided to cut open the bag, making a huge rectangle instead. This worked just about as well as our first idea did, leaving us with our personal best of 5 seconds in the end.

Launch day 4

Ok, so you all have to admit, today was a pretty miserable day for bottle rocket launching.
Especially when you can't even get 5 seconds of air time after four tries. :(
Anyways, the video below shows our last and best attempt (4 seconds air time)
before running under cover. As for an explanation of why we didn't do so hot,
I would say that 1: Our parachute always seemed to have trouble deploying and 2: The extra
strong wind this afternoon caused the rocket to launch at an extremely funny angle.
Finally, the last huge factor that played into this would have to be the rain. It rained so hard today,
that I believe it weighted down not only our rocket, but also the parachute, possibly preventing it

from deploying as planned.

Launch day 3

So for our 3rd day of launching, we managed to pull off 4.7 seconds of air time.
What helped us today the most was our parachute. Although the parachute was rather
ghetto in a sense, (just a plastic bag), it improved our air time. Sadly, my bad camera man skills
failed to show this, but our bottle rocket glided through the air, which indeed increased our time.
As gravity pushes down on our rocket, the parachute that deploys increases air resistance by expanding it's mass. This means more glide time for us, which makes for a better time.

Launch Day 2

On today's launch, we used an unmodified and modified rocket. Our first video shows the unmodified rocket which did not launch at first. We pumped the bottle 6 times total for this launch. The total time in air was about 3 seconds. The second video shows our modified rocket launch. We attached 3 makeshift fins with duct tape. We pumped the bottle 12 times total for this launch. Our total air time on the modified launch was 4 seconds. This shows the fins could have improved our time or we had better wind conditions. It also shows that more pumps could have improved the time. For both launches we added 500 milliliters of water.