Week 1: Water Rocket Introduction

This is an excellent way to introduce students to rockets.  All you need is a soda bottle, water, a rubber stopper, a bike pump with a pin (the type used for a basketball), straws and some wood to make a stand.   For the first week we had the students all put the same amount of water in to their bottles to just get a feel for how they work.  Check out the video below.  We spent about a half hour in the beginning lecturing about rockets, and got a glimpse of how difficult it is to hold their attention at 6 o'clock at night after a full day of school and homework!

We wanted to students to get a couple of things out of this particular lesson.

1. Understand Newton's Third Law: Ever action has an equal and opposite reaction
2. Why using some water instead of just air will propel the rocket higher
3. The tradeoff due to the added weight of the water

Check out the videos of the students launching their first rockets!