/

Rocket Height Lab

By:Dayne Marchant
Academy for Math Engineering and Science
B2
Written for Mr. Hendricks honors physics lab

Abstract
This lab was done in four sections, finding the thrust of a given rocket engine and
finding what kind of engine it was. Next part is to find out the drag coefficient so it can
be found out how much air resistance will be pushing down the rocket and see how
much it affects the height. The 3rd step is to use a numerical iteration on a spreadsheet
that will give us a predicted height. The final part is to launch the the rockets and
measure the height. The results were White(A engine):
White(A engine):

28m

Black/Red(C engine):

105m

Red/Yellow(A engine):

63m

Red/Silver(A engine):

27m

Red/Silver(C engine):

134m

Introduction
The reason for this project is that this project forces to use everything that has
been taught in the classroom will help and apply to this project. The general objective of
this lab is to find how high the rocket goes before actually launching the rockets and
doing different labs to get the most accurate calculation as possible and then compare it
to the results that we will later do and put into a spreadsheet that calculates the
heights.. This project gives a perfect example of kinematics and kinematics is always
used. Kinematics is basically the geometry of motion or what it really is, it is part of
classical mechanics and it tells the motion of points or objects. With this project, there is
also dynamics to include. Dynamics is the idea of the force that is influencing a moving
body. For the first part of the lab, the impulse needs to be found on the rocket engine.
The impulse is a force acting briefly on a body and producing a certain limit of change
in momentum. Momentum is the amount of motion of a moving body, measured as a
product of its mass and velocity. Now there is the impulse/momentum theory to go over.
That is the idea that the momentum is equal to the impulse.This is the derivation of it.

The impulse needs to be known because there are several types of rockets.
There is an A,B,C,D, and E. The letters represent the impulse and A has a 2.5 impulse,
B has 5, C has 10, D has 20, and E has 30. There are also numbers at the end of the
letters and that represents the average thrust is gives off. Example, C6 engine has an
impulse of 10 and a thrust of 6 newtons. Later in the project, the heights that are found
by doing the actual project will be compared by a spreadsheet that uses numerical
iteration. Numerical iteration is a mathematical method that creates a sequence that
improve approximate solutions for several problems.

Thrust Analysis section

The thing that is trying to be solved for this part of the lab of what type of engine
is being used.But the bigger purpose of this lab is to use the thrust of the rocket that
was launched and use the information that was recorded every 0.1 seconds. For this
lab, there is a rocket with an engine that is unknown, a force gauge that is used to
calculate the thrust, and a battery with wires that are attached to the battery and ignited
so no one will hurt themselves. There is a string around the rocket so it will not go off
course. So for this lab, there is a trigger mode set on the force gauge and what that
does is starts the timer once the rockets hits the gauge making the time intervals start.

Firstly, the gauge is set to 0 because there was a little amount of force already on
it once the gauge started so it is zeroed out to get the most accurate thrust as possible.
Below are the first 5 intervals and the last 5 intervals and they are negative because the

digital force was set as the pulling forces are positive and the pushing forces are
negative. Also this includes the graph of the launching rocket. The area under the graph
can be used to find the total impulse and you can use right and left end rectangles for
each time interval to find an accurate area.

Time(beginning)

Thrust

Time(final)

Thrust

.03

2.5

-.03

0.1

.03

2.6

-.03

0.2

.06

2.7

-.03

0.3

-.33

2.8

-.03

0.4

-.76

2.9

-.03

0.5

-5.38

3.0

-.03

The area is found and the answer was around 4.5 so the rocket is a B engine
and the average force of all of it is 6 so the engine that was used seemed to be a B4 but
what it was really it was a B6. Finding the average force is done by having each ot the y
coordinates on the graph and multiplied by one time interval and that is added to the
next y coordinate timesed by one time interval and etc. It is later divided by 30.

Drag coefficient lab

The goal for this and take the drag coefficient so later, it can be used to
determine the height of the rocket when it is shooting through the air. The drag
coefficient is the ratio of the drag on a body moving through air to the velocity and the
surface area of the body.It is needed so there can be an accurate predition for the
height of the rocket. There will be air resistance to the rocket so the drag coefficient is
absolutely necessary. The drag coefficient not only depends on the size of the object but

also if it has sharp corners because if has sharp corners, it has for surface area for the
drag force to push the object down.

Up above is a drawing of the wind tunnel that blew wind at a rocket at a certain
velocity and the rocket on the string flew to a certain angle.Inside the wind tunnel there
are honeycomb like structures and both sides of the rockets. The reason why it is in a
honeycomb structure is because it helps accomplish smooth laminar that is pushing on
the rocket instead of some areas of the tunnel are super weak while other parts are very
powerful.
Before anything is done, the derivation of the equation must be done first
because no one can use an equation they do not know.

Now that the equation has been derived, the values can be put in to get a drag
coefficient. The values are , velocity is 32m/s, the angle is 30 degrees, the rocket
weighs 0.094 kilograms

So finally, the results that were gotten was that the drag force was .40 Newtons and the
drag coefficient was near 0.0003 for the Red and Yellow Rocket.To find the Big white
rocket, a ping ball was used because the drag coefficient would be 0.0005 and these 2
numbers are averaged to get the drag coefficient of the big white rocket which is
0.0004. Now that this information is found, the next part of this lab can be done and
remember, this is one significant figure so it is not 100% accurate but it is still pretty
good.

Flight Prediction
This part of the lab is critical because we will use numerical iteration to find a
predicted height the rocket(s) will go because it is much faster to do this instead of
figuring all of the math of each interval by hand.This numerical iteration uses several
mini equations to get an answers that will give the height of what it should be. There is
an example of the spreadsheet of the Red and Yellow rocket with a C6 engine on the
appendix and it is easy to follow along.The tallest height is circled.
That first column are time intervals of 0.1 seconds which means, it record
information every 0.1 seconds. The second column is what the thrust is at the time

interval and the thrust information was given to us in our spreadsheet. The third column
is the 2 thrust forces that are one after another added together and divided by 2 to get
an average force. The fourth column is the drag force and that is found by using the
initial velocity from the previous column and multiplied with the drag coefficient that was
found earlier by the lab before this one. This is needed to see how much force the drag
force is pushing down on the rocket and this will affect on how high the rocket will
go.The fifth column is the average net force and this is needed to later find out what the
average impulse is . The average net force is found by getting the average thrust found
earlier by subtracting mg and the drag force from it.
The sixth column is the average impulse and this is used to find the final velocity.
The equation is just the average net force times delta T(the change in time) which is just
0.1 because thats how much a time interval is. The seventh column is the initial velocity
of the rocket when the time interval starts and this is found by using the final velocity
from the row above. The eighth column is the final velocity and this is how fast the
rocket is going at the end of the time interval. This is found by adding the initial velocity
and adding the average impulse from the same row and dividing it by the mass of the
rocket with the engines mass. The ninth column is the initial velocity and the final
velocity added together divided by 2 to have the average velocity through the 0.1
second it went through. The tenth column is the initial height and this is the height it was
at when the time interval started and this is gotten by just using the final height that was
used in the previous row. The eleventh column is the final height and this is what needs
to be solved to compare it with the actual results that will be done later. To find this, the
initial height is added to the average velocity and both of those are divided by the
change of time or delta T, which is just one.
When plugging in the masses of the rocket and engine together into the
spreadsheet with the found of coefficient of 0.0004 these are the results that are
received.
A8

B6

C6

Red/Yellow:

58.31m

117.29m

240.44m

White:

79.27m

134,50m

252.31m

Red/Black:

24.32m

67.17m

184.27m

Now the coefficient isnt super exact because we only used one significant figure
but it is good enough for this lab. Air resistance is crucial to include in the report
because the affect the outcomes of the prediction very drastically. If the drag coefficient
of 0 was plugged in the height of the rockets could even double the height of the
predicted height with the coefficient of 0.0004
Launching Rockets
The purpose for this lab is to see if the test and math we did previously in the
other parts of the lab actually match with the actual thing.In this lab, there will be a setup
with 3 people 50 meters away from the launch pad with protractors and they form the
shape of an equilateral triangle. The reason for so many protractors is so if the rocket
curves, there will be other angles that can be averaged out to an angle that would be
near the same angle as if the rocket went straight.

There are 4 rockets in this lab and for one of them, it is launched twice. There is a white
rocket that is launched with an A engine, a Black and Red rocket launched with a C
engine, a Red and Yellow rocket launched with An A engine and finally, a Red and Silver
rocket launched with an A and C engine. The rockets have been launched at this point
and here are the results that were found by measuring these rockets angled from each
of the 3 people.
Person 1

Person 2

Person 3

Average

White rocket (A engine):

23

20

22

22

Black and Red rocket (C engine): 70

60

63

64

Red and Yellow rocket (A engine):50

55

48

51

Red and Silver rocket (A engine): 30

25

23

26

Red and Silver rocket (C engine): 65

60

83

69

The objective for this part of the lab is to find how high the rocket went in the real
launching and then compare it to the one that was used with a spreadsheet that gave
what it was supposed to be if everything went perfectly and assuming the rocket
launched perfectly straight. Remember, the spreadsheet works by using a numerical
iteration technique. To find the height of each rocket with the given 3 angles, there will
be the equation of 50tan(), and representing the angle that was averaged out from
the other 3 angles that were found.
The heights are now found at this point, it can be compared with the heights that
were predicted in the spreadsheet and remember, the spreadsheet is assuming
everything went perfect with the rocket launching straight.
Conclusion

The heights that were measured and calculated

predicted heights

White(A engine):

21m

28m

Black/Red(C engine):

105m

184m

Red/Yellow(A engine):

63m

63m

Red/Silver(A engine):

27m

32m

Red/Silver(C engine):

134m

204m

So overall, the results that were found and predicted are not that far off from
each other infact, there is one that is exact and that it the Red and Yellow rocket. Things
that went wrong or could of done better on where to find some way to get the rocket to
launch straight because for the ones that weren't so great, they launched at a weird

curve. Also the coefficient only has one significant figure but, there was one result
where is matched exactly with the predicted and that was with Red and Yellow rocket
with the A engine.
Reflection
With this lab I have had a better concept of everything we have learned in class.
Because I feel like this lab uses parts and pieces of everything that has been taught so
far. One of the things I did get confused on was deriving the equations but as I got
further into the lab, it made more sense to me. I also struggled on understanding the
graph on the first part of the lab and the whole finding the area under the curve but it
looked familiar so I went to my math teacher and got help from her and that was an
obstacle I gladly came over.