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Rocket Into Scouting!Who: Scouts, Siblings and Friends
When: June 6 @ 6:15 PM Where: Milpitas Christian School 3435 Birchwood Lane, San Jose, CA What to Bring: Please bring - 1) A Empty 2 Litter bottle - Per Scout or Child 2) Tennis Ball if you want to add weight to top. All Card stock and cutting materials will be provided as will the pump materials and water. |
What makes the Waster Rocket Fly? |
This is a great question to ask your Scouts. During our program, I got a lot of kids saying the bike pump made the rocket fly, or that air made the rocket fly. In reality, it is neither of these. The rocket moves because of the water pushing out of the bottleneck. As water pushes down towards the ground it pushes up against the rocket, allowing it to take flight.
This is because of the conservation of momentum. Imagine you are on an ice rink with superhuman strength carrying 100 cannon balls. As you throw these cannonballs to your front – which way do you skate? You would skate backward. As you put a force on the cannonball to hurl it forward the cannonball puts a force on you to move you in the opposite direction, backward. If the cannon balls are very heavy and you are light as a feather then you would move very quickly backward while the cannonball lazily rolled forward. On the contrary, if you were very heavy and decided to throw ping pong balls instead of cannon balls you would move very slowly backward while the ping pong balls flew forward. |
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