Water Bottle Rocket Research

I needed to build a water rocket that would be aerodynamic, light, and have the ability to glide down to elongate flight time. I started out researching different bottle rocket designs to find what would work best. While researching, I found that having a slimmer bottle on top of the base bottle, versus having two regular sized soda bottles would be more aerodynamic and would allow me to give the rocket a more “bullet” shaped body. When looking at fins, those with larger fins worked more efficiently than those with smaller fins. Those fins that were slimmer toward the top and widened down seemed to work better than those that were rectangular. I needed to find a way for my rocket to glide down after launch which brought me to contemplate the idea of another set of small fins toward the top of the rocket. When designing my rocket I took all of these components into mind. The rocket ended up having four angled trapezoidal fins, a center of mass made with clay at the meeting point between the soda bottle and the smart water bottle, paper over that joint to give it a more aerodynamic purpose, four straight triangle fins toward the top of the smart water bottle, …show more content…
The fins were made from ¼ inch Styrofoam. Clay was placed between the 2 liter bottle and 1 liter bottle for the center of mass. The bottles were joined together with hot glue then duct tape was placed at the joint. The four bottom fins were glued at a 17 degree angle with hot glue. They were evenly spaced out and duct tape was placed on either side of each fin to prevent any air going into any holes and also to stabilize the fins. The four top fins were glued with hot glue as well but were not glued at an angle. Duct tape was also placed to hold and stabilize the top fins. Paper was placed around the area between the top and bottom fins where the bottle joint is. The nose of the rocket was made with a snow cone paper