First Day of Engineering Rockets!!

Welcome to the first day of Session 2 of the Wildcat Science Camp! We started similar to session 1–learning everyone's names and then moving into the lab for a discussion of lab etiquette and camp norms. Afterwards, we took the kids out to the lakefill, which will serve as our launchpad for the rockets (think Cape Canaveral). We then launched our first rocket–a simple 2 liter water bottle. We did one launch with the bottle ⅔ full and another with the bottle ⅓ full. We then gave the campers their challenge for the week: create a water-bottle rocket that flies higher than the test rocket. This launched us into our next discussion, where the campers talked about ideas they had on how to make their rockets fly higher. We then took a quick stop for lunch before returning to the lab. 

After lunch, the campers got to watch a video of a real rocket launch! They also learned an important lesson about engineering from the video: “success is anything where we learn something for next time”. We encouraged the campers to have this mindset throughout the week, because let’s face it, designing a rocket is hard work, and there may be some struggles along the way, but as long as we learn from every mistake, then we can be happy knowing that we have achieved success, just maybe not in the “traditional sense.” After watching the rocket launch, the campers finally got to explore three different ways of improving their rockets–stability, aerodynamics, and thrust. We split them up into three groups, Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini. Group Apollo went with Dan and tested aerodynamics in a home-made wind tunnel, group Mercury went with Liya and Najma to explore stability by testing different arrangements of fins and weight, and group Gemini went with Taylor and Zuhayla to explore thrust by testing how different volumes of water affect acceleration. Each group only got to explore one variable, but tomorrow the groups will rotate and explore the other two variables. We are excited to continue investigating and testing designs with the campers, and we hope they are looking forward to it just as much as we are.