Does the weight of a rocket effect how far it travels?
Georgia Peart
10SCI3
2018

Make pretty

Introduction

Background research

How does a Pop rocket work?
The rocket in this experiment works by pushing air with a force to launch the rocket into the air. If the angle of the rocket is the same, the only factor that changes the height of the rocket is the force applied to the pump.

How does a rocket work in space?
For a rocket to work in space, it needs to fly in a vacuum. Newton’s Third Law of Motion explains how this works, as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. An example of Newton’s Third Law is the recoiling of a gun. The bullet is the action and the recoil is the reaction. The (EXPLAIN) …show more content…
This allows rockets to be reused and limit the waste the space programs create. Space travel is bad for the environment as it uses large amounts of fuel and materials so by reusing the rockets it saves materials and prevents space junk.

Evidence in Nature
Evolution indicates the importance of weight in species that fly. Birds have semi-hollow bones, so they are light and are filled with air. The heavier the bird, the more energy required to fly. This applies to rockets, planes and jets.

How does a plane work?
This experiment also applies to planes. Planes require fuel

How does this relate to real life?
This is relevant to rockets and planes and is an important factor for companies interested in space exploration and launching rockets. A lot of energy is required to take rockets out to space, but the heavier the rocket, the more energy required. The energy is created by burning fuel, but the fuel is heavy, so you need more fuel just to carry the fuel. The weight of a rocket doesn’t stay the same as fuel is constantly being burned which lightens the rocket.

How does the weight affect the gravitational pull
There is a gravitational pull on every object in Earth, it is what keeps us to the ground.

-NASA …show more content…
The difference between each mass is not even and regular. The difference between weights was, in order 72, 274, 142, 54 and 150. There no pattern and the difference changed quite significantly each time. This is strongly caused by outliers as they can largely affect the averages.

Validity
The main variables for this experiment were wind, the angle of the retort stand, how far the rocket was placed down the tube, the rocket used, where the brick was dropped from and where the weights were placed. For this experiment to be valid, they had to be controlled.

The tube’s angle from the foot pump that was held by the retort stand was set at 50° and the same rocket was for the entire experiment. To guarantee that the angle stayed the same, it was measure each time a weight was added to the rocket. A variable that was important to control was where the weights were placed on the rocket. We placed the clay weights 4 cm from the base of the rocket. The brick was attempted to be dropped at 30cm from the ground each time but this was not also exactly the height. The brick is a heavy object and the person dropping it hands may have moved a little. It is not guaranteed that the brick was dropped from exactly 30cm every time. The rocket was placed at 11cm down the