The methods that we used worked pretty well, and if we were to do this lab again I would not change much. But one thing I would change would be the calibration and measurement system. The measurement system used relied on water displacement. This is why the rocket was completely filled with water before filling it with gas. This method makes it easy to tell how much gas is going into the ‘rocket.’ If this were not the method used, it would be nearly impossible to tell how much gas was filling the rocket. (see hand drawn diagrams attached) Although this system works well, I felt that it was a little bit inaccurate, and caused what were supposed to be similar ratio rockets to travel different distances. I would change this process to provide more consistent and reproducible data. This means that the data is re-creatable, and can be replicated. This …show more content…
One mistake many made (my group included) was the tipping of the ‘rocket’ to that the opening pointed up. This caused the gas to escape the rocket, and yielded an unsuccessful launch. This is why you are supposed to hold the rocked downward (as mentioned in the procedures). Another source of possible error is leaving the rocket on the launcher for too long. This results in the water leaking out of the rocket, and a lack of thrust, yielding a much shorter flight. This is because of Newton’s Laws of Motion; if the water is pushed out of the ‘rocket’ by an explosion (action) Then the ‘rocket’ will fly off (reaction). Another source of error is calibrating the ‘rocket’ wrong. If, as a group, we did not divide up the rocket into 6 equal sections, this would greatly affect our ability to reproduce ratios. Say one of the rockets broke, (too many test flights) if it was calibrated differently than other rockets we made, all of the test results would be different for the new