Charles Oliphant

Academy for Math, Engineering and science.

Mr. Hendricks
B4

Rocket Lab
 Abstract
In this report the force of the a rocket engine was measured by a force
gauge. The drag force was also calculated and used to predict the height that
rockets would go. The rockets were set off and the height was calculated by using
the angle of the rocket at maximum altitude which was measured. The predicted
height for the red and white rocket with and A engine was 65 meters while the
measured height was 38 meters.The same rocket with a B engine was predicted to
be 135 meters and measured to be 59 meters. The height was also measured for a
gold/ black rocket that was predicted to go 23 meters and measured to actually go
24 meters with an A engine. That same rocket with an B engine was predicted to
go 63 meters and was measured to actually go 48 meters.

Introduction
The purpose of this Rocket Lab was to provide a real life experience that ties
together all of the topics that have been learned so far this year. It brings together
kinematics which is the study of motion, acceleration, etc, and the topic of
dynamics which is why things have motion, acceleration, etc.
A list of terms and their definitions are given: Impulse, which is the force
multiplied by the time that force acted upon in object; Momentum, which is the
Velocity squared multiplied by mass of the object; Drag force, which is the force
of air resistance on an object; Drag coefficient, which is the constant that was
calculated and shown later in the report.
A huge part in the lab report was the Impulse momentum theorem. The
relationship between the force and time was key in predicting the maximum
altitude that the rocket would achieve.
The derivation of the impulse momentum theorem is given:

It was necessary to use numerical iterations when predicting the height

because air resistance was included in the calculation and because the the velocity
kept changing as the flight continued, the air resistance did as well. So it was
necessary to iterate the height of the rocket each tenth of a second to find the
maximum height and is shown later in the report.

Thrust Analysis
This lab was meant to predict the impulse of a rocket to see what see the
amount thrust it put out every tenth of a second. It was also to predict the type of
rocket engine that it was. The first one of these will be needed to find out how high
a rocket will when the class makes rockets later on.
The thrust was measured by attaching an unknown rocket engine to a car on
a track. The car was set against a device that measured the force the rocket would
produce. The rocket engine would point away from the force gauge and the car
would push against it. Acquiring the data point required the use of a software
called logger pro. The software was set so that it would trigger at exactly -1
Newtons (this is because the gauge measures pushing forces as negative) and
would record data every tenth of a second for 10 seconds. The force gauge was
then zeroed to make sure that it would not measure any forces already acting on it
that were not from the engine. The software was also set so that there was data
recorded from one second prior to trigger. A trigger was used so that there was no
timing issues and that the data points were as accurate as possible.
In order to ignite the rocket engine an igniter wire was connected to a battery
and then to the rocket engine. This igniter wire was coated in phosphorus similar to
that on a match head. When electricity ran through this wire it began to heat up and
eventually ignited the phosphorus which in turn ignited the rocket engine.
 Graphs and tables for A through C engines are shown:

The total Impulse of the engine was found by calculating the area
underneath the thrust vs time graph. The impulse was measured by breaking the
odd shaped graph into two shapes that approximated rectangles and then calculated
the area of each by multiplying the width( time) by the height(force) which is the
definition of impulse. Or calculate the impulse for each tenth of a second and add
them all together.

When the total impulse was calculated it was 9.818 newtons. A rocket
engine is categorized as A, B, C, etc, These letters tell the impulse the rocket has.
An A engine has an impulse of 2.5, a B engine has twice that with 5 and a C engine
has twice that with 10. As the engines get bigger the impulse get multiplied by 2
with each consecutive engine.After the letter comes a number telling what the
average force is that the rocket will produce. After that number is another number
telling the how long it will take for the top engine part to burn and push the
parachute. The engine classification would look like this; C6-5.

After calculating the impulse the average force was calculated by taking the
total impulse and dividing it by the total amount of time.

The total force was calculated to be 5.17 newton’s. This meant that the
predicted engine would be a C5 Engine. C being the total impulse and 5 being the
average force. It turns out that the engine was actually a C6 engine. Possible
reasons for why there is discrepancy could be manufacturing error as well as the
fact that there was friction between the car and the track this could have lead to the
force measure being off.

Drag Force Analysis

The goal of this lab was to determine what the drag coefficient of the rocket
is. The coefficient is needed to help determine the maximum altitude that the
rocket will reach. This was accomplished by placing a rocket inside of a
windtunnel attached to string. There was also a protractor that was placed into the
tunnel so the angle could be measured. The angle would then be used to calculate
the drag coefficient.

The force of air resistance(Drag Force) on an object is equal to the velocity

squared multiplied by the constant which is the drag coefficient. It is necessary to
include drag when making the height prediction because the rocket will move so
fast that the air pushing against will cancel out some of the thrust that is pushing
the rocket up. The drag coefficient depends on both the size and shape of the
object. This means that objects with sharp corners will have a higher drag
coefficient then ones with smooth corners. This is why modern cars have smoothed
corners. It is so the car will use up less energy than it previously would have with
sharp corners therefore improving gas mileage.
 Equipment setup

As the drawing above depicts there is a honeycombed structure at the front

of the wind tunnel. This is because the fan draws air through the wind tunnel by
pulling it instead of pushing. When it does this it creates a laminar flow which
means that the airflow is straight and have little to no turbulence. If the honeycomb
was not there then there would be so much turbulence that the rocket would have
been bouncing around in the tunnel and it would have been impossible to get an
accurate measurement of the angle that the rocket would be being pushed This is
needed to find the drag coefficient.
Derivation of the constant

After the rocket was put into the wind tunnel it was determined
experimentally that the average angle that the rocket was pushed to was 30
degrees. This was then inputted into the equation above along with the mass which
is .038 kg to find the drag coefficient for the rocket. The drag coefficient was
calculated to be .0003 N*s^2/m^2. Using this calculated number the drag
coefficient for the read and silver rocket was estimated to be .0005 because it had a
similar shape but was much bigger. There was also a ping pong ball that was tested
and the drag coefficient for that was calculated to be .0002.

Numerical Analysis
In this lab the predictions for the height of the different rockets with
different engines were made. This was accomplished by using data that was
measured in the thrust analysis lab to calculate the average thrust, the drag force,
the average net force, the average net impulse, the initial velocity, final velocity,
the average velocity, and the final height. This was done for every tenth of a
second in order to find the maximum height.
Free Body Diagram:

To calculate the average thrust, two thrust data points were taken one after
another from time index 0 to .1 then the average thrust from time .1 to .2 and so on
and so on until the fuel of the rocket was used up.The drag force was calculated by
taking the final velocity and multiplying it by the drag coefficient which was
estimated for the three bigger rockets to be .0005 N S^2/M^2 and for the one
smaller rocket to be .0003N S^2/M^2. For the first tenth of a second the drag force
would be zero because the previous final velocity was zero.The net force was
calculated by taking the average thrust then subtracting it by the force of gravity
then subtract that by the drag force.The average net impulse was calculated by
taking the net force and multiplying it by the change in time over that tenth of a
second.The initial velocity is the last tenth of second final velocity. The final
velocity was calculated by taking the initial velocity and multiplying it by the net
force then multiply it by the change in time then divide it by the total mas of the
rocket.The average velocity was calculated by taking the initial plus the final
velocity and dividing them by two.All that is left to do to calculate the final height
is take the initial height and add it to the velocity multiplied by the change in time.

Doing all of this calculations would have taken in immense amount of time
soa spreadsheet that could calculate the maximum height for each tenth of a second
based on the mass, drag coefficient, and the thrust data from the initial experiment
was created. This spreadsheet was used to find the highest altitude that the rocket
would achieve.
To find the maximum altitude from looking at the spreadsheet the point at which
the altitude is no longer increasing and is about to decrease is the highest altitude
the rocket will achieve. The spreadsheet above is for the white rocket with an C6
engine.

The following table shows the predicted heights for 2 different rockets with
an A8 engine, a B6 engine, and a C6 engine.

The White Rocket The Red and silver Rocket

Height with A8 Engine 20 meters 24 meters
Height with B6 Engine 58 meters 68 meters
Height with C6 Engine 169 meters 182 meters
 When the drag coefficient is set to zero (in other words there is no drag on
the rocket) that there is a big change in maximum altitude. The white rocket has a
drag coefficient of .0005, with this it goes to a maximum altitude of about 169
meters with a C6 engine. If the drag is set to zero however the maximum altitude is
345 meters. That is more than a 100% increase just because there was no drag
acting on the rocket. So it is extremely important to factor in drag when making the
height predictions.

It is also important to look at how much time it take for the rocket to reach
its maximum altitude. This is important because if there is a C6-5 engine being
used then there will be a five second delay from when the engines starts to when
the top of the engines ignited and pushes out the parachute. This means that the
rocket has to stop moving upward by the time this happens or else the parachute
will do nothing and the rocket will crash.

Another thing to consider is that the margin for error is extremely high for
the height predictions. For the A8 rockets it is about +- 5 meters but for the C6
engines it is about +- 20 meters. This because there is really only one significant on
the drag coefficient.

Flight Results
In this lab all of the previous labs and predictions were put to the test and the
rockets were launched. In order to do this the engine first had to be put into the
rocket, then wadding was put down in the rocket so when the top of the engine
burned in order to release the parachute, the parachute was not melted away in the
process. Then an igniter was put into a small hole at the bottom of the engine with
a plug to make sure that the igniter did not fall out. The igniter wires were then
attached to the igniter. Then the rocket was placed on a launch pad and attached to
a vertical rod that would keep it straight for the first few milliseconds. The igniter
wires were attached to a battery which had a switch that when turned on would
send electricity through the wires and ignite the rocket.
In order to measure the maximum altitude the rocket would go, the angle of
the rocket from 1.5 meters above the ground up to the rockets highest point was
needed. In order to get as accurate a measurement as possible 3 different people
with protractors were set 50 meters from the launchpad as well as set an equal
distance away from each other. This was done to make sure that even if the rocket
tilted there would be multiple people recording the angle so the data would be as
accurate as possible.

In order to find the height the angle and the average height of the person and
the distance away from the pad put into the equation of 50 multiplied by the tan of
the angle plus 1.5. The 1.5 is the average height of the person who is measuring the
angle.

Derivation for height equation.

 Angles for each rocket and engine tested
Angle 1 Angle 2 Angle 3 Average Height
Red/yellow 32 degrees 48 degrees 29 degrees 36 degrees 36 meters
rocket with
A engine
Red/yellow 37degrees 75 degrees 35 degrees 49 degrees 58 meters
rocket with
B engine
Gold/Black 24 degrees 24 degrees 29 degrees 26 degrees 24 meters
rocket with
A engine
Gold/Black 29 degrees 54 degrees 50 degrees 44 degrees 48 meters
rocket with
B engine

Some aspects of the lab that made it hard to get measurements was the fact
that sometimes the rockets went so high that they could no longer be seen and
therefore a measurement could not be made. Another reason that the angle
measurements could be off was the fact that one of the people measuring was
langing down instead of standing up.

Conclusion
The flight results are given:

Predicted Height Measured Height

Red/yellow rocket with A engine 65 meters 38 meters
Red/yellow rocket with B engine 135 meters 59 meters

Gold/Black rocket with A engine 24 meters 26 meters

Gold/Black rocket with B engine 63 meters 50 meters
 As is visible above, some of the measured heights are very different from the
predictions. This is because the predictions were made based on the assumption the
rocket would go straight up. This was not the case. As some of the rockets went up
they veered off to the side and therefore made it so the predictions were off.
One thing that could have been done differently to get better results was to
instead of calculating the height based on the measured angle, the height was
measured by a atmospheric pressure sensor. This sensor could sense the
atmospheric pressure and then tell the maximum altitude that the rocket achieved.

Reflection
I think that this lab report was very important because it brought all the
things i learned so far this year together. It really solidified it all for me and gave
me an opportunity to use all of it in a practical application. I especially think that
all of the derivations I had to do as part of this report will help me in tests and in
my future in physics. One of the hardest sections of the lab report was the height
predictions because I had to explain how we got the average thrust, the drag force,
the average net force, the average net impulse, the initial velocity, final velocity,
the average velocity, and the final height. And that took me a long time to
accomplish.