They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I always felt that this depended upon how many words you really wanted to write about the picture. However, I do think that what I am holding says all the words it needs to. It is in fact a small, totally home made rocket; this includes the propellant which I made. The fuel is Potassium Nitrate (KNO3, Saltpeter), and table sugar (there are trace elements of Carbon and Sulfur). This may surprise you that the rockets propellant is made out of sugar and fertilizer however this is a very well documented amateur rocket propellant (sometimes called Candy Propellant). Anyways I mixed the dry powder with some alcohol and using a rod to maintain a hollow core to the engine; I packed the mixture down with another rod and let it dry. I then put a nose cone on it and installed a fuse and the wooden stick that gives it stability in flight. Then it was put on our launch rod and prepared to be fired; I lit the fuse and ran. You can see the length of the fuse in the picture and it wasn’t long enough so I didn’t actually see it go up. But the other observers say it went well over the tree line so I figure maybe 100-150 ft for my first ever rocket engine I was very happy. We tested other rockets that day with varying success. One rocket started to thrust, flew about 8 ft in the air and fell back down having run out of thrust (this was due to poor packing of the fuel, in this case black powder). The other rocket had an experimental nozzle on it, however this just resulted in pressure building up until the nozzle blew out, and the rocket got tilted when this happened; the result a rocket streaking across my backyard at about a 45 degree angle to the ground. The ultimate purpose of these activities is to start a rocket group within the Rutgers AIAA club. However, the people I did these activities with asked to be not named, because of this I cannot post the video we took until I have had time to edit them. However you have something to look forward to.
Launch Control, if you look in front of me you will see the rod with the rocket on it even though it camouflages with my shorts.
Launch Control by the end of the day, you can see the scorched ground below the laucnh rod. Also, you can see some of the sticky sugar from the fuel stuck to the rod. I would like to make sure it is clear that we had my mothers permission to do this, and she watched on all our launchs.
These are four more engines I have made since that day. The two on the left are black powder, the one second from right is mostly sugar fuel with a bit of black powder (I ran out of sugar fuel) and the one on the right is all sugar fuel. PLEASE NOTE THAT THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND LAUNCH OF THESE DEVICES WHERE VERY CAREFULL. THIS SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED BY PEOPLE WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DANGER OF WHAT THEY ARE WORKING WITH. THESE ACTIVITIES SHOULD NEVER BE UNDERTAKEN WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION.
Lump, you ARE an adult, at least age-wise, so you could supervise yourself.
ReplyDeleteI hope I have an actual launch, not just a video, to look forward to!
ReplyDeleteThat looks really neat. What did you make the cardboard casing out of?
notelon SHH don't let anyone know that we could supervise ourselves. Yoni, the casing are paper and masking tape with some glue.
ReplyDeleteAs far as regarding the supposed adult supervision, the supposed adult found the following statements made by the rocket launchers amusing:
ReplyDelete“Don’t worry “
Right
“We know what we are doing, we are aerospace engineers”
Just before that rocket went shooting off at ground level, b’h in the opposite
direction from where the aerospace engineers were standing.
And the best of all:
“We were thinking of launching some of these at school”
Aryeh didn’t you learn anything from the fiasco in 7th grade when you brought those two bottles full of science experiment to school? And that was before some recent events have understandably made people even more touchy.
First of all no rocket ever shot at ground level, because last I checked a 45 degree angle is not a 0 degree angle (the bad one would have been a 180 degree angle). Also, the science experiment incident was 8th grade.
ReplyDeleteDo tell. What bottles?
ReplyDeleteUm, notelon I believe that you actualy know the answer to that one. I also think that all the readers who don't know what is in those bottles probably don't want to know what is in the bottles.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, as Aryeh reminded me, the bottles of science experiment incident happened in 8th grade, not 7th. How could I forget? 7th grade was memorable for the “Black Beauty” essay debacle (at least to start with.)
ReplyDeleteSecondly, as to the angle of rocket trajectory, let me dust off my trigonometry skills, measure distance from Rocket launch to where Aerospace Engineers were standing, measure distance from ground to between center of Aryeh’s chest to Aryeh’s left eye, and calculate the exact range of the angle of trajectory.