Rockets

I then found the measurements of the body tube and engine tube of my rocket, in inches.

I started by cutting the strip of paper out of my instruction manual with marking lines on it and gluing in onto the body tube. I used an angled ruler to mark these lines down the entire body. These lines would indicate where my wings and launch lug would go. The launch lug is the tube that the wire of the launch pad would run through to keep my rocket standing upright during takeoff.

I then marked off lines on the internal body tube as the instructions indicated. These marking would help with placement of the green spacing rings I would have inside my rocket and the engine hook. 

I installed the engine hook here by making a small cut with a box cutter and sliding the end through it. The engine hook is placed out of the end of the rocket to hold the engine inside of the rocket so it doesn't fly out during takeoff. 

I then placed two spacer rings on the other markings and secured them with white glue. These rings would keep the engine tube snugly fit inside of the body tude. 

I also added a spacer ring on the inside of the engine tube to hold the engine in the specific part of the engine tube and not allow it to slide upwards. 

I then added white glue to the outer green spacer rings and slid the engine tube inside of the body tube to the line that I had drawn that indicated the stopping point. 

These are all of the pieces of balsa wood I was given to assemble my wings. One difficult part about working with the wings was how flimsy the balsa wood was. While assembling, I broke small corners of the wood off and had to glue them back on. It was tedious and time consuming. 

These are what the kit called "missal launchers". I did not have enough time to add these to my rocket because we reached the end of the school year, so I ended up skipping all of the parts that had to do with the missals.

These are the shafts of my wings. 

I then super glued the flat layers onto the wing shafts. 

I then glued my wings onto the body tube. 

I cut 2 3/4 inch pieces of this balsa wood stick. 

I attached these pieces onto the remaining parts of my wings. 

I added these last wing pieces onto my rocket. 

I then spray painted my rocket navy blue so that when I launched it, I would not lose it in the sun. 

I then cut a piece of paper out of the manual, glued the launch cord onto the piece of paper, and folded it over the cord. 

This is the parachute that I will be using. As you can see, I cut a hole in the middle of the parachute so that the rocket will come back down faster and it will not be blown away by the wind. 

I then tied my launch cord and my parachute to the nose cone of my rocket. I also glued the paper end of the launch cord into my body tube so that when the nose cone is ejected so the parachute will unfold, the nose cone and parachute will remain attached to the rocket. 

In this picture, I have inserted my engine and my igniter. The igniter's two ends are bent opposite ways so that when I attached the alligator clips, that were also connected to the batteries, the two ends would not touch and mess up the launch. The yellow stopper is holding the igniter inside the engine so that it will not fall out during the launch. Inside the rocket, some meshing has been pushed into the body tube to protect the parachute that was inserted next. The altimeter was also pushed into the body tube and then capped off with the nose cone. 

This is a picture of the altimeter I used to measure how high my rocket went. I attached it by tying it through the parachute so when the parachute and nose cone were ejected, the altimeter would return safely with them. I drilled holes in my rocket's body tube so that there would be airflow inside of the rocket. This was necessary because the altimeter works by measuring the drop in air pressure, calculating the height increase, in feet. By this reading, my rocket went 73 feet. 

This is the video of my rocket launch. As you can see, I simply attached the alligator clips to the two 6 volt batteries, that were attached in series making a 12 volt power source. This current lit my igniter and the flame from the igniter triggered my engine and the rocket launched. As the rocket flew, the flame rose higher into my rocket, eventually ejecting the parachute and altimeter.