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Soda Bottle Rockets

status: complete

3D Printer Projects

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Curiosity Spaceship Simulator

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Home Theater PC

Iris Comic Book

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Potato Cannon

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Soda Bottle Rockets

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SoyBot, a Ground Vehicle for Soybean Phenotyping

Trebuchet

Universal Remote

Westhampton Library Maker Club

This project was inspired by my high school physics class. In the class, we had to build rockets out of a soda bottle that could carry an egg. At the top of the rocket's flight, the egg was supposed to eject and be carried back to earth with a parachute. I thought it was so much fun that I went home and built my own launch pad.

Related info:

Design

Like a handful of my projects, this one came from Make Magazine. The biggest difference with our design was, instead of having a tall pole with guylines, our launcher was short and attached to a piece of plywood so it would sit directly on the ground with no extra setup. We also used a simple nail in place of the retainer/release spring.

Build Log

You can see our brave astronaut Jim West getting ready for liftoff:

Once the launch pad was done, we designed some rockets and had a blast (pun intended). The results are available for viewing on my Youtube channel: Rocket TV.