The Rocket Project Pt.1

On a Monday afternoon Josh, Akira and I go to a local primary school to teach science. To cut a long story short teaching is kinda boring so we just have a bit of fun with science stuff. Recently we have been messing about with a bottle rocket.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of playing with one you fit a supplied valve to the bottom of a drinks bottle put in some water and attach a bicycle pump. Then you pump. You keep pumping until the tube pops of the bottom the pressure forces out the water and the bottle flies into the sky like a bat out of hell.

We swiftly got bored of the 1.5 litre bottle we were using so when we found a 20 litre bottle there was no question what we were going to do with it. However the problem is that the valve only fits on a standard drinks bottle neck so some adaptation is needed.

This is stage one of construction of my bottle missile. I wrapped string around the neck of the big bottle to fatten it up then used bathroom sealant to block fill all the gaps. This should make it water tight but I'm not convinced that it can stand up to the 35 bar of pressure that the container reaches before launch. That's a job for tomorrow, right now the sealant needs to dry and the apprentice is on tv.