How do you feel overall about this class? What characterizes your experience? This class quickly became my favorite. I really enjoyed the projects we did and what we learned through them. This class gave me the opportunity to learn without it feeling like learning, we were able to learn by doing things on our own. What did you learn about yourself as a learner?Andrew told us at the beginning that we were the ones deciding what to do and how we managed our time. At first I was a little surprised because in past years the teachers always told you what to do. I'm extremely glad he had us do that though because I was able to learn what benefits me the most work wise. I was on top of my work and I always made sure I had things done on time. When was a time or what was something you did when you were driven by curiosity?The time I was the most driven by curiosity was when we did the Bismuth lab. I saw it sitting in the pan and instantly wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know why it had those specific colors, why those colors appeared on it and how you could change those colors by doing different things to it. When was a time or what was something that you did when you weren’t driven by curiosity?The only thing we did that I didn't have any curiosity for was the Oobleck lab. I had done it in elementary school and it was just a repeat of what I had already experimented. I still enjoyed the lab because it was fun to play with and it was interesting to compare the two experiments. Please share any remaining thoughts or feedback.I really enjoyed Andrew's talks in the beginning of class and at the end. I especially enjoyed the random stories he'd tell and I hope he continues that with the next class.
Now that this project is complete, how do you feel about it? What things stand out? I actually really enjoyed this project which to be honest I didn't really expect. I'm not that interested in rocketry so when Andrew said we were making rockets I was not at all excited. After making our rockets I am extremely glad we did this project. I was able to learn about rocketry in a fun way and I learned not to count things out til you try it. What, if any, science or technological things did you learn from doing this project? What is necessary to understand to build a successful rocket?The most important thing I learned was where to place your fins and how to find it out. It's a pretty easy process with some math involved but we were able to calculate it quickly. Another thing I was able to learn about fuel, what type of fuel works best for something, why it wouldn't work for another thing, etc. What, if any, metacognitive knowledge did you gain? (what did you learn about yourself as a learner - work habits, work ethic, tendencies, etc.)I noticed that during most of the projects we worked on I took control. I became the one who was in charge of making sure everything got done and looked nice. I like to have things a certain way and I will make sure it gets to be that way even if I have to do everything myself. How did you collaborate with others in this project? (Who did you work with? What did you contribute? How did you operate as a group or unit?)I worked with Handy and Nick for almost every project we had in Chemistry and we work well together. Most of the time the work was split up evenly but at times I would see one of us doing more work than the rest. My only regret is not working with other people, I know I work well with those two but I didn't get the chance to collaborate with my other classmates. If you could do this project again, would you do anything differently? What advice would you give to the next class of rocketeers?I would probably work with other people to see how our thoughts come together and to see what our end product would be. The only advice I have is to not rush things, do things one at a time because if you don't your calculations may be wrong and everything else will then be wrong. Rockets need to be calculated very carefully and the tiniest error could be drastic in the end. Based on your responses above, what advice or suggestions would you give to Andrew to help him design a better rocket project?I don't have any suggestions to give. I really liked how he ran the class and I liked what he taught us. He made chemistry fun and had us learn through hands on learning which I think is the best way to learn.
Planning StageWhen we first started the design process for our final rocket we weren't exactly sure what we wanted it to look like. The only thing we had a design for was our fins, we knew we wanted them to be curved with pointed ends. BuildingOnce we got our design down we started to build our rocket. To make our our rocket body we used paper strips, a wooden stick, and wood glue. We taped the corner of of one strips to the stick, wrapped it around then taped down the other corner. For our second strip we glued it onto the first strip and wrapped it around the other direction. We continued those steps until all four of our strips were attached to one another. We waited about a one day for it dry, but once when we tried to take the paper off we realized that we used wood glue on wood. We had Andrew try to take it off and eventually we got our tube off of the stick but unfortunately our tube wasn't going to work. Thankfully Andrew gave us a tube that he had made and we were able to use that. For our nose cone we decided to just go with part of a PVC pipe. Making Our FinsThe first step in making our fins was we had to figure out how big we had to make them and we also had to find out where to place them. In order to do that we had to figure out where our center of mass was. To calculate the size of our fins we drew a picture of what our fins were going to look like then we asked Bradon for help. After doing some math we figured out that our fins were going to be around 6 inches tall and our length was going to be about 3 or 4 inches. After we calculated our fins we cut and glued them to our rocket. BeautifyingAfter we had our rocket body assembled we decided it was time to make it look nice. Handy and I wanted to paint our rocket blue but Nick wanted to paint it red. We compromised and said that we would paint our rocket body blue and paint our fins red. We ended up painting our rocket light blue, our nose cone red and our fins red with a black outline. We sat looking at our rocket for a while and came to the agreement it was too plain. To fix that we printed out The Incredibles logo and glued that to our rocket. ParachuteOne of the last things we had to make for our rocket was a parachute so when we launched it it wouldn't be destroyed when it hit the ground. We needed to make our parachute out of nonflammable material so for that we used bio-hazard bags and cut them into an octagon. Andrew had a drawing with steps of what to do on the board and I made our parachute on my first try. We used tape to reinforce the corners that way we can hole punch them to tie strings to them that we would later tie to our nose cone and rocket. We then tied up all the strings to together and went outside to make sure it would open correctly. I ran back and forth with the parachute in my hand in order to test it. Once we knew it was good we tied it to the nose cone and to the side of the rocket. MotorOur final step was to find a way to make sure our motor would stay inside our rocket and hurt someone. We took a piece of metal and bent it to create a bar the motor would sit on. For the motor we used rocket candy, usually we make motors in batches of 2-3 but we only needed one this time. We cut the recipe in half to get the amount of fuel we needed. Launch DayTo launch our rockets we went to Fiesta Island. While we were waiting to launch ours Handy and I kept saying that our rocket was going to fail and it was going to be the worst out of all of them. Our motor wasn't as powerful as our peers' and we were afraid we had made our rocket too heavy. I lost sight of the rocket and wasn't able to see how far it went so in the video you can hear me say it wasn't that great. Once we went to go get it I realized that our rocket actually did really good. I was extremely surprised by how far it had gone and regretted doubting it. Hello! Section 2 has finished and all of my work will be posted below! Check it out to see what I worked on during that section!
Today we had to have two people critique our blogs. I had Handy and Nik check my blog and give me some feedback. The feedback I got from Handy was that sometimes I would repeat what I had already said so I need to double check what I'm saying. The feedback I got from Nik was instead of putting the photos on the bottom of my posts put them on the sides of my writing so you can see it as you are reading.
For this project Nick, Handy and I partnered together. Since we weren't really sure how to make the goggles on our own, we printed out the template from the link Andrew gave us and made imprints on the piece of cardboard we collected. Once we were sure all of our pieces were accounted for and traced we covered the piece of cardboard with black duct-tape. We then cut out all of the pieces and waited for the lenses to come in. Looking Back: What Happened? Nick, Handy and I made virtual reality goggles out of cardboard and duct-tape. We printed out templates for the outside box and cut the pieces out after tracing them. We had a little trouble getting our pieces to come out the right size and shape but if something was a little off we fixed it as best as we could. Looking Beyond: What Do You Think Has Happened? What's The Science? When you insert the lenses into the VR goggles it gives the viewer a chance to experience different scenes by reflecting light off of the video player to create one big picture. The lenses are intended to make the scene zoomed in and to make it seem as if you are actually there. Looking Inward: Humans Doing Science - Lab Practice My partners and I pushed this project off to the last minute for two reasons, the first reason was because we didn't have lenses and the second reason was because we were putting other work first. We didn't manage our time well with this project which resulted in us scrambling til the last minute to try and finish our goggles. Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact Handy, Nick and I have worked together before and I think we make a good team. We all get along really well and we know that when we have work to do we will do it no matter what it takes. I printed out the templates and did a couple of the tracings and cut out some pieces, Handy helped with the tracing and cutting and Nick helped with the cutting and putting the goggles together. Looking Forward: What Next? If we were to do this project again I would like to learn more about it. We didn't really learn anything about VR goggles, we printed out the templates, put it together and then that was it. There was no real learning involved and that was a bummer, I think it would've been cool to test out different lenses and designs to see how those factors change the overall outcome. Take Aways The biggest take way I have coming from this project is knowing that I need to not push my work off. I make other projects a priority and my final result for some things don't come out as good as I would have wanted it. For the last component of this stage of the rockets we had to calculate how much thrust our motor gave. We made a motor and tested it out on the thrust stand. Once we got our data we calculated our average thrust and then we had to set measurements of our rocket. Our motor peaked at 609 grams of thrust and it's burn time was 3.5 seconds. In the photos below I have included the data we collected from the thrust stand, the graph of the thrust and the calculations for our rocket. Looking Back: What Happened? I was in a group with Handy and Nick. We decided we didn't want to make a black powder motor and we didn't really want to make a regular sugar motor. We were originally going to make a crimson powder motor but another group made one and it didn't work that well. We decided our best option was to look up different kinds of sugar motors. We found a post about rocket candy motors and we thought it was pretty cool. We measured out the potassium nitrate, sorbitol and iron oxide, combined it then melted it down. We were able to make two motors per batch with some left over. Looking Beyond: What Do You Think Has Happened? What's The Science? We had only ever made a regular sugar motor before so we weren't too sure what would happen when we melted it down. When we first tested the extra bit we had left we were all amazed at how cool it was. As soon as we saw how well it performed we knew we were choosing that for our fuel. Looking Inward: Humans Doing Science - Lab Practice I believe we got desirable results. We had a couple motors perform better than others at times but we weren't really sure why. We had one motor that was a complete let down and we figured out it was because moisture had gotten into it. Overall though I believe we had a good test experience with rocket candy. Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact When we made our very first rocket candy motor Nick wasn't there. We actually had another classmate with us, we originally were going to use rocket candy as a test just to see how it would perform. We didn't think we would end up choosing it as our fuel so when Nick came back it was a surprise to him. For the first few motors we had JP and Bradon help us out but soon we were able to make the fuel on our own. I mainly measured the powders and stirred them while they melting. Looking Forward: What Next? I am really wanting to play with rocket candy a little more. The fuel is very interesting and it can give you really good payoff depending on how you core it and how big the tube is. My group has already started talking about trying to find longer tubes so we can make a motor with a higher thrust capacity. Take Aways The thing I am taking away from this project is the knowledge about rocket candy, how it functions and how it's made. Rocket is a really good fuel if you know how to get it to it's full potential. Handy, Nick and I had decided we want to make a rocket candy motor. Rocket candy is potassium nitrate and sorbitol mixed together and melted down. We asked JP to help us make our first batch since he makes that kind of motor all of the time. We measured out 66 grams of potassium nitrate, 33 grams of sorbitol and 1 gram of iron oxide. We mixed all of it together in a bowl and melted it on a hot plate. Each batch of rocket candy made 2 motors with some left. Since we melted it down we had to let it dry and harden before we could put the nozzle in it to finish the motor. Rocket candy is very sticky so we had to have either Andrew, Bradon or JP to drill the core. We decided to have a full core because that would give us the most thrust.
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