Week 3

Rockets & Aircraft

(AE, ChE, & ISE)

Aerospace, Chemical, and Industrial Engineering

Aerospace

Aerospace engineering is the process of designing, developing, and testing aircraft/spacecraft related systems. This includes aerodynamics, propulsion, and different materials to explore space flight.

Chemical

Chemical engineering is the combination of chemistry, physics, and biology to design concepts that change/convert raw materials into useful products like fuels and food. This is important in manufacturing and environmental protection.

Industrial

Industrial engineering is all about improving complex systems, processes, and organizations to better efficiency, quality, and productivity. It combines engineering with management, data analysis, and human factors as well.

Skill Building Activities

Airplane Activities

This assignment/activity focuses on learning how to design different types of gliders and airplanes, this includes 2 paper airplanes and a straw glider. Each design uses pretty simple materials such as tape, paper, index cards, to create the wings, fuselages, and other parts of the plane. The straw glider has paper rolled around it in a specific form so that it is able to glide with its lightweight body. We explored different plane types, wing shapes, placements, angles, and also experimented by adjusting and tweaking some parts to observe the results with each edit/change.

Rocket Activities

In this specific activity we created two types of rockets, the straw rocket and the stomp rocket, which also uses similar materials to those used in the Airplane Activities above (paper, tape, index cards). For the straw rocket, paper was rolled around the straw to be able to fit it when blown into later along with a paper cone and fins attached to it. The stomp rocket was similar to the straw rocket but instead of a straw it was a PVC pipe to form the body. Again, a paper cone and triangular fins were attacked to the rocket. The differences with these two rockets is that the straw rockets is launched using the air blown from the student whereas the stomp rocket is powered by using air pressure from the student jumping onto an empty plastic bottle connected to the launcher. Much like the Airplane Activities, this experiment also allowed us to experiment with different designs, test our creativity and observe how different variations lead to different outcomes.

Final Project Process

Initial Rocket Design

For our initial rocket design which we used on the day we tested our design, we created it with a solid paper base, balsa wood fins, and a cone made of balsa wood too. A straw was attached to the side of one of the balsa wood fins to help stabilize the rocket, and the engine was inserted in the hole under the rocket's base. The parachute which supposedly deploys once the rocket reached the peak of its arc was inserted to the top of the base of the rocket and connected to the cone made of balsa wood.

VID_20250703_085543_155.mp4

VexIQ Robot

The VexIQ robot was used to check/detect the color of the litmus paper and test it's color hue using a color sensor which was programmed into the robot that we built. It also had wheels and a claw so that it was able to fetch and grab the litmus paper and hold it up to the sensor.

VID_20250703_144341_228.mp4

Final Rocket Design

The problem with our initial rocket design that we were much to focused on making the rocket durable, in doing so, we made the base fit to the nose tightly which prevented the parachute from deploying properly. The reason why the parachute didn't deploy wasn't the only problem however, we observed after the first test that the plastic parachute was burned because of the ignitor. The ignitor rose in temperature so quickly that it burned the parachute and caused it to stick to the rocket's base. Supposedly we expected for the nose/top of the rocket to pop off due to the amount of pressure built from the motor, releasing the loosely packed parachute. However, as stated previously, our rocket was much too tight so although there was enough pressure, instead of the nose breaking off from the rocket, the neck or the part between the nose and body broke off instead. On a brighter side, our rocket was durable enough that it withstood the power of the launch (as shown in the video above) and reached a great height.

For our final design, we made two changes. The first being that the body was less tight so that the parachute and the nose was more free and able to deploy once the rocket launched. The second was creating a little separator inside the rocket's base which was made of paper to make some distance from the motor and the parachute so as not to make the same mistake of burning the parachute again. Our parachute worked amazingly, probably the best out of all the groups and it deployed perfectly, which allowed us to collect the litmus paper without much trouble.

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