Rocket Report

Chloe Hoffman
Academy for Math, Engineering, and Science
Written for Mr. Hendrickss Honors Physics Class
Doug Hendricks

Abstract
The rocket launch lab compared heights predicted by physics students to the
height the rockets reached when they were launched. To begin making predictions, the student
measured the thrust emitted by rocket engines. To measure the thrust the rocket was set
horizontally against a force gauge, the engines ignited and the data recorded through a calculator.
The next step in their process was to experimentally determine the drag coefficient of each
rocket. Students put the rockets that would fit inside a wind tunnel and from there predicted the
drag coefficient. The rockets that did not fit inside the wind tunnel had the drag coefficients
estimated relative to the known drag coefficients. The final step in predicting the maximum
heights the rockets would reach was to use numerical iteration for each rocket/engine pair. The
predicted heights were then compared to the actual heights that were measured when the rockets
were launched and the results were as follows:
Engine
A8
A8
A8

Predicted Height
28 meters
63 meters
32 meters

Actual Height
21 meters
63 meters
27 meters

Introduction
The rocket launch lab solidified knowledge of kinematics, the study of motion and
dynamics, the study of forces and how they affect motion. The lab was done over the course of
several weeks. During this time many tests were done on the rocket. Students used the results of
these tests to predict the maximum height a rocket could reach. To test the results, the rocket was
launched and the height the rocket reached was calculated. The actual height was compared to
the predicted height to check the accuracy of the predictions. In the first part of this four part

lab, a rockets thrust was tested. From the data the students gathered, they were asked to
determine the type of engine the rocket used during the test. The type of rocket engine used
affects the thrust of the rocket. The three types of rocket engines used during this test were A8,
B6, and C6. The number in the engine name is the amount of force exerted by the engine
measure in newtons. The letter in the rocket name represents the impulse, which is the Force the
rocket engine exerts multiplied by the time the rocket engine is firing. The Impulse of an A
engine is 2.5, the impulse of a B engine is 5, and the impulse of a C engine is 10. The impulse
momentum shows that impulse is equal to the change in momentum. Momentum is the quantity
of motion in a moving body. The impulse momentum theorem does not mean that the impulse is
the same thing as momentum, it is simply a helpful relationship found mathematically. The
derivation of the impulse momentum theorem can be seen below.

In the second part of the lab the students calculated the drag coefficients (quantities used
to measure the amount a drag force acting on an object) of each rocket that was going to be
launched. Drag force is any force acting in the opposite direction of an objects motion. For the

purposes of this lab the drag force acting against the rocket is air resistance. The final step in
calculating the rockets predicted height involved conducting a series of mathematical steps,
repetitively for different thrusts of the rocket engine at different points in time. These repetitive
calculations are known as numerical iteration. Numerical iteration was used to predict the heights
of four different rockets at four different times. Numerical iteration makes it possible to solve for
the area under the curve of an inconsistent force. After the predictions were made they were
tested against the actual heights of the rockets when they were launched. Then students discussed
what could have caused the predictions to be different form the actual heights the rockets
reached.

Engine Thrust Analysis

The goal of this portion of the rocket launch lab was to determine the thrust produced by
A8, B6 and C6 engines. To begin the lab set a calculator was set to record the data for the
experiment. A program called Data Mate was essential for this function. An electronic force
gauge was connected to a calculator. The force gauge collected data and sent it to the calculator
to be recorded and later graphed. The lab setup consisted of a car, a track, a rocket, and the
electronic force gauge. The force gauge was securely attached to the track to ensure it would not
move when it is contact with the rocket. The rocket was firmly fastened to the car. The car was
placed on the track and the track tilted to a slight angle so the car did not roll off.

Setup:

Before the rocket is ignited, the calculator must be calibrated to ensure the most accurate
data possible. The program Data Mate is required for the next steps. Like an electronic scale in a
chemistry lab, the force gauge must be zeroed to decrease the likelihood of inaccurate data. Next,
to rid the test of any possible human error, a trigger should be set. A trigger eliminates human
error in that it does not rely on a person to tell the force gauge when to begin collecting data.
Once the start button is pressed, the force gauge continually collected data until the set time
expired. A trigger collects only the important data with a function called pre-store. Pre-store
keeps a percentage of the data prior to the point when the force gauge detects the beginning of
the test. The pre-store on the calculator was set to ten percent.
The calculator recorded data every tenth of a second. This gave ample data for the
purposes of this lab. The average rocket launch lasts approximately two seconds. To ensure that
all the important data is collected, the run time was set for three seconds. This resulted in thirty
samples of data being taken over the course of the experiment.
The force gauge being used for this lab read a pulling force as a positive force. Since the
rocket was pushing against the force gauge the force was measured in negative Newtons.
After all the preliminary steps, the test began. The rocket should not be lit with a match or
lighter, doing so could result in serious burn or injury. The best way to ignite the rocket fuse is
with a battery that is connected to a plug with tips containing phosphorous.
A pulse was sent to the rocket engine and the rocket engine ignited. The calculator that
was connected to the force gauge was connected to the students calculators so the data gathered
could be seen by everyone in the class.

The Graph:

When the data was graphed, the information was used to determine the type of engine
that was used in the rocket. To determine the engine in the rocket the area under the curve of the
graph must be determined. The area under the curve is the same as the impulse of the rocket
because Impulse= F*t.
Math Procedure:

Right endpoint rectangles are used in the example above to calculate the approximate area under
the curve. Note that left endpoint triangles would have served the same purpose. The average of
the right and left endpoint rectangles would be the most accurate estimation of area under the
curve.

Drag Force
The students understood how to experimentally determine the thrust emitted by a rocket
engine.. Although air resistance hadnt been factored into previous calculations, it significantly
impacted the height the rocket would reach. In order to predict the heights of the rocket, the drag
coefficient of the rockets that were going to be launched had to be experimentally determined.
. The drag coefficient comes from the equation:
Fd = kd * v2
This experimentally determined equation describes drag forces on fast moving objects.
This equation related the velocity of the object to the drag force (Fd), however, their relationship
was not linear. Whenever the drag force doubled the velocity quadrupled. This is why velocity
was squared in the equation. The term kd represented the drag coefficient. The drag coefficient
was determined experimentally by placing the object, in this case a rocket, inside the wind
tunnel. The rocket was attached to a string with a protractor behind it. Before the wind blows the
string WAS hanging at a 90 degree, when the wind tunnel is turned on the string would move in
the direction the wind is blowing. The change in degrees on the protractor was important to the
calculations.
The lab set-up should look like this:

Drag coefficients not only depend on the size of an object, but the shape as well. For
example, a Lamborghini might have the same volume as other cars but it designed to pierce
through the air rather than slam into it.
Put the rocket in the wind tunnel, a device that produces a wind speed of a known
velocity in order to test the effect of extreme airspeeds on an object. Use an anemometer to
measure the wind speeds in the tunnel. An anemometer has a small fan in the top if that enables it
to read wind speeds. An anemometer was placed inside the funnel shaped front end of the wind
where the air was being sucked in. The anemometer was placed right against the honeycomb
metal that blocks the fan. This gave an accurate reading of the wind speed inside the tunnel. The
wind tunnel at AMES has an airspeed velocity of 34 m/s. The honeycomb metal in the wind
tunnel also protected objects from the fan. The honeycomb structure made the air blow more
evenly onto the object to get a more accurate reading from the protractor. The even distribution
of air so that it blows on all parts of the rocket equally is called laminar flow.
When the first small rocket is placed inside the wind tunnel, despite the honeycomb
structure, it was very difficult to get a clear reading from the protractor because the rocket
continued to move. For this reason, the change in degree can be recorded with only one
significant figure. Once the change in ( when the wind was blowing-90) the students used the equation
derived in the introduction of the lab report to determine the drag force of the smaller rocket.
Example:

The drag force of the small rocket and the velocity of the air inside the wind tunnel was
determined, Fd = kd * v2 and simple algebra can be used to solve for the drag coefficient of the
small rocket.

The students were not able to measure the change in for the big white rocket because it
was too big to fit inside the wind tunnel. However there was a accurate way that the drag
coefficient of the rocket can be estimated. It is known that the drag coefficient of the smaller
rocket .0003 and the drag coefficient of a ping pong ball is .0005. The cone on top of the larger
rocket has approximately the same diameter as a ping pong ball. The drag coefficient of the
smaller rocket was used as a lower bound estimate and the drag of a ping pong ball as an upper
bound estimate and make an overall estimate that the coefficient of friction for the bigger rocket
is the average of these two numbers, or .0004.
Numerical Model
In this portion of the lab numerical iteration was used to make the final predictions of the
launched rocket height. The drag coefficients from the previous portion of the lab were heavily
utilized. Doing all the calculations that numerical iteration required by hand would take hours.

An Excel spread sheet was used to eliminate the time consuming and tedious process. However,
it is still important to understand how to calculate the numbers.

The data was divided into

1
10

second intervals. The thrust the engine produced at that

point is time was recorded. The data WAS calculated to describe the rockets motion at that point
in time. In the first part of the lab the thrust for only one type of engine was determined, but the
manufacturers of the rocket engines give out information about their rocket engines after running
extensive tests on them. This is where the data for the thrust of the other rocket engines came
from.
An example of two rows of the spread sheet was done by hand and a visual from the
spread sheet is shown below. An example of a spread sheet can be found in the appendix of this
lab report.

The spread sheet can be found on Mr. Hendricks website. To utilize it the thrust weight of
the rocket with the engine that it used and the drag coefficient must be entered into the spread
sheet and it should yield all the resulting heights. This must be done for all the rockets and with
all the different types of engines. The largest number under the Final Height is the maximum
height of the rocket. All the numbers after the maximum height of the rocket are inaccurate
because the drag force has been calculated assuming that the rocket is going upwards.

The predicted heights the rockets reached were

Red/Black Rocket
Big White Rocket
Red Yellow Rocket

A8 engine
24 meters
28 meters
63 meters

B6 engine
67 meters
75 meters
132 meters

C6 Engine
184 meters
195/197 meters
281 meters

Until the Part 2 of this lab drag force had not yet been taken into consideration
thus far in physics class. But if 0 is entered into the chart for any of the drag coefficient for the
rockets it can be seen that air resistance makes a substantial impact on the prediction of the
rocket height. On some rocket/engine pairs the heights can differ by over 200 meters. This shows
how vital Part 2 of the lab was to getting accurate height predictions.

Flight Results
All the calculations for the predicting the height was finished. This portion of the lab
determined how accurate the students predicted heights by launching the rockers. This portion
of the lab was done in a field where the rocket was not in danger of hitting cars or passersby.
From a birds-eye view, the field where the experiment took place looked like this:

Three people were given protractors, these three people moved to different positions of
the field that were fifty meters away from where the rocket was being launched. The rocket
launch set-up was similar to the one in when the thrust of each rocket was determined. However,
this time the rocket was perpendicular to the ground. The rocket was attached to a thin, meterlong metal rod that served as a guide the rocket it the first moments of flight. The rocket engine
was equipped with a plug that would ignite the engine. The plug was connected to cables that
were attached to a battery. The three rockets with known drag coefficients were launched.
Another rocket that was not present during the time when the estimated heights were determined
was launched in addition to the others, however it was easy to calculate estimated height when
back in the classroom.
Rockets never stay at a ninety degree angle during their flight. Thus three people with
protractors measured the angle of the rocket at their perspective. The average of these angles
yielded a relatively accurate angle to use to calculate the height. The calculation goes like this:

Here are the results of the rocket launch

Rocket

Engin

Perso

Perso

Perso

Averag

Heigh Predictions

n #2

e Angle

1. White
2.Black/Red
3.Red/Yello

A
C
A

#1
23
70
50

20
60
55

#3
22
63
48

21.7
64.3
51.0

(m)
21 m
105 m
63 m

28 m
184 m
63 m

w
4.Red/Silver
5.Red/Silver

A
C

30
65

25
60

25
60

26.7
69.3

27 m
134 m

32 m
204 m

Trials two and went crooked which would explain why the numbers are so different. The
systems of equations being used to predict the heights in this equation only work for a rocket that
is heading straight upwards.

Conclusion:
There were many of places in the rocket lab where estimations had to be made in order to
continue on. In the thrust analysis portion of the lab the car did not stay on the tracks. The car hit
the force gauge at an angle which led to an uneven distribution of force on the sensor. This likely
resulted in a discrepancy in the data. There are many places where estimated guesses had to be
made in determining drag forces. The inaccurate reading on the protractor in the wind tunnel
affects the accuracy of the data substantially. Two of the rockets drag forces had to be estimated
because they were too big to fit inside the wind tunnel that estimation led to differences between
the predicted height and the actual height. In the numerical iteration portion, the fact that we
cannot mathematically include that the mass of the rocket changes in flight due to the loss of fuel
was another possible place for inaccuracy in the students predictions. Overall, the data gathered
is very accurate to the numbers predicted. The only huge differences between the predicted
height and the actual height were due to the rockets not launching straight. The data is
impressively accurate considering all the estimation that was made in the process. Overall, there
would be nothing that should have been done differently.
Here are the rocket launch results again:
Engine
A8
A8
A8

Reflection:

Predicted Height
28 meters
63 meters
32 meters

Actual Height
21 meters
63 meters
27 meters

Before we launched the rockets I was worried that all the rounding would make our
predicted numbers worthless. This however was not the case at all. The only big problem we had
during the tests was during the thrust analysis portion when the car was derailed. Those numbers
did not really affect what we did later on though. I thought that the inaccurate number we got for
and all the other rounding done when we were determining the drag coefficient would make
our numbers irrelevant. I was amazed by how little rounding affected our end result. I think our
lab went near flawlessly.