Rocket Science Report

Academy for Math, Engineering, and Science

Doug Hendricks

A4

Howard Pututau

Abstract:
The goal of this experiment was to predict the height of a rocket based on a certain kind of engine type. To achieve this goal several experiments and tests were done to measure the different aspects of a rocket. The predicted heights were 45m (Big White Rocket/B6 Engine), 44m (Silver Rocket/B6 Engine), 103m (Big White Rocket/C6 Engine), and 19m (Big White Rocket/A8 Engine). The end results after the launches were 68m (Big White Rocket/B6 Engine), 59m (Silver Rocket/B6 Engine), 147m (Big White Rocket/C6 Engine), and 23m (Big White Rocket/A8 Engine). Once the rockets were launched, much compensation was made to make up for the imperfect world we live; only to find that human error caused more problems than most.

Introduction:
Physics is learning about how things move, why they move, and what makes them move. In order to have a better understanding of the topic of launching rockets, to see what makes them move, how their engines work, and other aspects of the rockets flight do. With this lab you will study different aspects of how the rocket works, you can say why it went as high as it did what forces are acting on it and why its important not to ignore those forces when predicting the height.

The study of motion is called kinematics, which has a sub topic called dynamics, which is the study of the forces that cause an object to move. Other topics follow such as Impulse and

Momentum. Impulse is defined as the force acting on an object multiplied by the time it occurs, momentum is defined as the mass of an object multiplied by the velocity. Also part of dynamics is air resistance, which is a force opposite the relative motion. The equation for air resistance is Fd=kd*v2 or drag force is equal to some constant multiplied by the velocity square. The drag coefficient is the constant in the equation. Another equation that is helpful is the impulse momentum theory. Which is I=(t) you can derive this equation by: Step1: Start with formula for Impulse (I=f*t) Step 2: Then use newtons 2nd law to replace f (I=m*a*t) Step 3: Then use the motion equations to replace a (I=mv/ t*t) Step 4: Then if t=0t is just t now and the two times cancel each other out (I=m* v) Step 5: Since the is now I=mvf -mvo which means the impulse is equal to the change in momentum, I=(p)

Another important part of a rocket is the engine; there are many different types of engines. An example is a C6-4 engine, each letter and number has a meaning. For all engines the letter at the beginning tells you what the impulse of the rocket is and each letter stands for a different impulse (A=2.5, B=5, C=10, D=20, E=40) each letter is double the previous starting with 2.5. The first number in the name is the averages thrust for the engine which can vary, and the last number in the name is the delay time between the time that the first solid fuel runs out and the parachute is released. In rocket engine you have a solid fuel which burns the first and the longest you then have a delay cork that gives the rocket enough time to get to its highest point before releasing the parachute.

One of the last things you do in the lab is predict the height the rocket will fly but you cannot use the motion equations unless the flight is constant. In this case it is not but if you use numerical iteration to break the flight into smaller time interval and use that as a constant. Numerical iteration is the process of breaking things into smaller pieces to get results.

Engine Thrust Analysis:

The purpose of the first part of the lab is to identify what type of rocket engine is being used based on the data collected. To do this a digital force gauge is used which is attached to a track and an engine is attached to a car. Then the CBL is attached to the force gauge and data mate is used to record the information. For this lab data is recorded every 1/10th of a second, also a trigger is set up so when 1 N is felt the program begins to take data. Once everything is set up the rocket must be ignited to do this you attach an igniter to the end of the rocket because it cannot be ignited by hand. An igniter is a two wires one end of each wire has a phosphorous substance at the end that when the other end is connected to the battery the phosphorous ignites which in turn ignites the rocket engine.

Once everything is set up and the engine is ignited, the data is collected and graphed. When graphed it is clear the rocket starts off with a peak in thrust the comes down to a thrust that it stays at for almost two seconds. To name/classify rockets you must first know the thrust to find this the area of the graph must be found, so if you split the graph into two separate rectangles one on the bottom and the other on the spike. Once you find the area of each of the rectangles then add them together and you find the thrust for the engine. In the lab we found that the area of the spike rectangle to be .85 and the area of the bottom rectangle 8.2 which came to a total of 9.05 which would be classified as a C engine. The next part of classifying a rocket is to find the average thrust, this can be done by using the formula for impulse ( Force *Time ) .To figure out it was a C engine the impulse was 10 and the graph showed that the flight was over a time interval of 2 you can calculate the average thrust to be 5. With this information you can tell that its a C5 engine.

Drag Force (Air Resistance):

The purpose of this lab was to better understand drag coefficients and air resistance. To do this an equation is needed so part of the lab is to find and use the equation. In this lab a wind tunnel with a velocity of 15 m/s is used. Inside the wind tunnel in front of a window is a rocket attached to a string in front of a protractor. This is so later on the angle can be used to calculate the drag coefficient. In the wind tunnel there is a screen with a honey comb pattern this is so the wind in the tunnel is better distributed and the rocket with move smoothly instead of with turbulence which is when the wind in distributed unequally so the flight is uneven instead of smooth. An equation must be found to make sense of all the number that will later be found. You cant use the equation Fd=mgtan because the drag force and the drag force and the velocity are not proportional, but more like the drag force is quadruple the amount of the velocity so instead use the equation kd=Fd/v^2 . The equation states the drag force is proportional to some constant times the velocity squared, but since the purpose of the lab is to better understand the drag coefficient as well as the drag force another equation to use is Fd=mgtan . With the equations the wind tunnel can be used, in the wind tunnel the 61g rocket hung from a single string at 90 degrees. To make everything standard physics units the rockets weight will be .061 kg. The wind tunnel is turned on, and then watch to see how high the string goes by checking the angle,record the data. In this case the string went up to an angle of 120 degrees making it a 30 degree angle because you take 120 minus 90. From here use a free body diagram to get the equation Fd=mgtan . By entering the known variables, the output is the drag force can be found .From this equation the drag coefficient is found for better or more accurate numbers each of the different rockets could be placed in the wind tunnel to find each of the separate drag coefficients. The reason each rocket will have their own drag coefficient is because that all have different surface areas as well as different masses.

NUMERICAL MODEL:
The purpose of this lab was to be able to predict how high each of the rockets would go with each a specific type of engine. To do this the flight had to be broken up into smaller pieces and an average was taken between every tenths of a second and treated as a constant speed for that period of time making the entire flight constant. To break something down into smaller intervals is known as numerical iteration. To predict the height of the rocket combine the mass of the rocket and engine are needed as well as the drag coefficient. Once this information is found create a spreadsheet and let the computer do the dirty work. By hand it is not so hard but long and dreadful. On the spread sheet there were 9 categories were given to help organize the data to be calculated to find the max height for each flight. For the first average thrust it was found by taking the thrust at the beginning of the time interval and the thrust at the end of the time interval and dividing it by two. Next the drag force was needed it was found by using the equation Fd=kdv2 using .0015 as the drag coefficient and the final velocity from the previous line. Next the average net force had to be found which was found by the subtracting the force of gravity and the drag force from the average thrust. Then the average net impulse is multiplied by the net force and the time interval. The initial velocity was the final velocity from the previous row. Next was the final velocity which to find you add the initial velocity and the net force then multiply it by the time interval and divide it by the mass. You then add the final velocity and the initial velocity and divide it by two to find the average velocity. with all this information and acting as if it were a constant case then you can you the equation d=rt to find the final height. Once the equations for the numbers were found put the different thrusts in for each of the different engines as well as the different masses for all the engines and get the predicted height. Another point for this lab was to see the importance of air resistance and why it cannot be ignored in the prediction of things. It could change your results dramatically. For example to show no air resistance, instead of putting the air resistance into the spread sheet you would insert 0 making it so that air resistance is non-existent. If you are o compare the two you can see a huge difference between them some were double even close to tripled. From this lab you can predict the height very accurately, and if you wanted to get it closer you could break it into smaller time intervals. Also to get a more exact height you can calculate the drag force for each of the separate rockets. With this lab you can also show the importance of air resistance by comparing the flights with and without.

Flight Results:
Once the heights of the rockets were predicted with air resistance, all the rockets were launched. The actual heights are needed to be calculated, to do this three people (50m from rocket ) in a triangular set up held up a protractor with a string and nut for weight and followed the rocket once it got to the maximum height they held the string and the angle was recorded. The reason three people were used is because a rockets flight path is rarely straight up. So if only one person had taken an angle it could have been too big or to small and by adding a third person you make the angle more accurate, to get the angle from all three it has to be averaged by adding the three together and dividing that by three. With everything set up it could then be turned it into a simple math problem using triangles and tangent. To do this a diagram was set up (below) of a stick person and a triangle to represent the height the rocket would reach. Tangent was used because the distance from the people and the rocket and the angle were known and so the adjacent side was known and the opposite side was the unknown. Knowing that Tan()= opp/adj if both sides were multiplied by the adjacent the equation adj*Tan()=opp which is the equation needed to find the height as long as the h distance from the angle people and the average angle between the three was known. But the average height of the three people that took angles had to be added, which ended up being 1.6 and with the distance being 50 our equation ended up being(50*Tan())+1.6=Opposite/Final Height. (50*Tan())+1.6=Final Height The chart below shows all of the angles and the averages then the actual height as well as the predicted height. The angles shown above arent the angles the person took down but rather the angle subtracted from 90 because at eye level the weight sat at 90 so instead of using the angle like 120, 140, 150 and so on 90 was subtracted to get the actual angle that was needed and used to get the actual heights.

Rocket &Engine: White B6 Silver B6 White C6 White A8

Angle 1 Angle 2 Angle 3 Average Angle Actual Height 60 58 80 24 50 40 65 20 50 50 70 25 53.3 49.3 71.6 23 69 60 147 22.8

Predicted Height 45 44 103 19

Conclusion:
As you can see from the charts the results are not as close as we expected them to be. There are two main reasons for this: human error and the equipment used. The reason human error would is a problem is because even if you hold the string perfectly you can still give a number that has an error range from within 1 to 3 degrees. In the flight results you see that almost all the angles can be perfectly divided by 10 which is very improbable, which means that human error probably occurred. Another problem is the equipment the protractors give us okay numbers and a good idea of the height, but it doesnt give exact numbers again due to human error, but with an altimeter attached to the rockets you would get the exact numbers for how high the rockets went but due to price and other factors the protractors were a more reasonable tool for us to use.

Rocket and Engine White b6 Silver B6 White C6 White A8

Measured Height 69 60 147 23

Predicted Height 45 44 103 19

Reflection:
This lab all together went pretty well, with the obvious and not so obvious problems here and there. The first problem would be that when doing the rocket engine lab the first time it would not ignite. There could be many different problems whether it was a bad igniter, cable, dead battery or even just a bad engine. To overcome this best solution was to get new everything and change each of the components until it worked. Another problem was human error on the final flight results you can see that the angles that were recorded were all divisible by ten and while its not that its impossible it is quite improbable but due to the equipment there is obviously room for human error in there. Over the entire lab went I feel it went very well and it help me better understand kinematics and physics as a whole.