Launch #5

Our fifth water bottle rocket launching was a bit disappointing. In order to improve our time, we created a larger parachute from a garbage bag in the physics classroom. We also incorporated a larger cone to the body of our rocket. When we arrived at the field to launch our rocket, we felt very confident in our launching. Our first attempt was a rather failed endeavor for the parachute did not deploy resulting in a four second launch. Our parachute failed because the cone was fastened on the water bottle rocket too tight. For our second launching, we placed the cone loosely on the top of the water bottle rocket to not suffocate the cone. After launching the rocket, it had landed by the dining hall staircase because our parachute did not deploy. This launching was our longest airborne attempt with 6.3 seconds. The defect with this launching was that the parachute became stuck within the cone, thus causing a failed deploy. We attempted three more times (ranging from three to five seconds) with many unsuccessful results for the cone was either stuck onto the bottle or the parachute was becoming stuck within the cone. We were very disappointed with our results and decided to return back to our old parachute, which was rather smaller than our current parachute. We also decided to go back to our original cone, which is more compact than our cone from today. These last minute modifications can hopefully improve our time to at least nine seconds, so we can achieve a longer airborne time. We will retry tomorrow during lunch in order to reclaim victory and achieve an A on this launching. My group is not going to give up on our mission to achieve an A on this project and get nine to ten seconds in our launching. We will succeed!